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DIVINE 
PieNSONALE LY 


A Study in the 
Philosophy of Religion 


BY 


WILLIAM M. TRAP 


GEORGE WAHR, PuBLisHER 
Ann Arbor, Mich. 


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CONTENTS 


CHAPTER I. Gop anp PERSONALITY. 


The value of theology for the philosophical 
TAL GIMOT ENR CRU Gene a. RAEN at caliat eal a ails al Pats 
PP nerdeiiaricd® offexpenience yo i tiias os bisje en 
Psychological analysis of personality insufficient 
as an approach to the problem ............ 
The historical background of the terminology and 
idex. otdOrvine Personality iy) o.2 2S ie 


CHAPTER IJ. Divine PrersoNnatity AND HuMAN 
PERSONALITY. 


Inescapable inadequacy of terminology ........ 
The factors of self-consciousness and_ self- 

CITECHOT ey nas PU ee ies shit ray veuran etre age 
Personality ands OtHeRmess: ath cise i cag cls ah 
Personality in God and Personality of God...... 
Divine Personality and the metaphysics of time 


CHAPTERIII. Divine PERSONALITY AND INFINITY... 


The problems of infinity and absoluteness ...... 
Infinity and,the'spatial analogy io.) ue o4.. 2a oe 2 
Infinite Personality and the “new” infinite of 

THALIICIIALICS nai Mopac tare water iter cits tare 
FORM Lect theOhOmva shia estas toMy aver ata Sale! wena Cason ete 
Divine Personality and limitation ............. 
PersOnaitye ALCO POLED EG es oss t's herelaes vacate 
Personality and the problem of evil ............ 


~ CHAPTER IV. Dtvrne PersoNaLity AND ABso- 
LUTENESS. % 


StateimentoieLie PrODIenhy oe ctr 100g Cote, cade en ot oe 
IEAM ae DOSILIOT oe Sate are arait at's seis, oat aaaee Nae, shaw 
PHIL Oi s CONCE IUIOMI Rhee. pn Sartg A sae una outers 
VVC M ENS « OSALICI LIN carte de hins aeaketeti re Picts Nate fats ade tame ae es 
COC tIaA LL Re MISO Lepr ya anti, Avant a Miaeatanl Kosher, oy 
Personality inadequate as a description of the 

BE SETICE RPE CS irs te adore tasty ald eigen te Na hele 
CAOTICH isiO th Hla ewe Pe ots ween: iin eMenie e yc aki are 


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PREFATORY STATEMENT 


What [attempt to prove in the following pages is that 
the historic, theistic conception of Divine Personality need 
not be abandoned because of the objections raised against 
it during the last quarter of a century. With this I do 
not mean that the idea of Divine Personality is in no need 
of further development, but that the objections from va- 
rious quarters are not unanswerable, much less coercive, 
and that, consequently, this necessary development can 
carry forward the historical continuity which, theology 
aside, from the point of view of the philosophy of religion 
can trace its lineage to Plato. As over against opposing 
views, my thesis is that the theistic conception of a per- 
sonal God as the object of religious experience is not only 
defensible, but does most adequate justice both to the 
unique requirements of religion and to our reflective 
queries. 

The uniqueness of this study, if it have any, lies in the 
manner in which the problem is treated. Perhaps the most 
clear-cut delineation that has been made of the difference 
between the standpoints of theology and the philosophy 
of religion is that the former is theocentric, the latter © 
anthropocentric. Though in this preliminary study of one 
of the problems of the philosophy of religion I have en- 
deavored to be faithful to the anthropocentric viewpoint, 
I have made use of what theology has to offer, being con- 
vinced that much of contemporary thought upon the prob- 
lem impoverishes itself by neglecting the material which 
technical theology. can contribute in this field. Therein, I 
think, lies the greatest weakness of contemporary philos- 
ophy of religion. 

If any originality lurk in this thesis, it lies, I think, in 
the linking up of Divine Personality with eternity, in- 
finity and absoluteness. 


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CHAPTER [. 
GOD AND PERSONALITY 


Countless quarrels there have been about the problem 
of the relation between theology and philosophy. That 
theology can take the attitude of ignoring philosophy is 
just as fallacious as that philosophy, especially as it con- 
cerns itself with the problem of religion, can treat theol- 
ogy with disdain. For, theology continually and inevitably 
works with the metaphysical concepts of essence, attribute 
relation, being, becoming, nature, and so on, almost as 
much as technical philosophy does, Indeed in spite of its 
special standpoint, all competent theology is saturated 
with metaphysics. 

Especially, I think is this true with reference to some 
of the problems which have been veritable storm-centers 
in the realm of philosophy of religion during the past 
quarter of a century. The problems of the personality of 
God, of Revelation, of infinity, of the relation between 
God and that Absolute which certain philosophers adore, 
cannot well be adequately investigated without taking into 
account what theology has to say about them in its field 
and from its point of view. As “all flesh is not the same 
flesh,” and all theology is not the same theology, the 
philosopher undoubtedly has the right to turn a deaf ear 
to a theology not worthy of the name. But a theology 
which really investigates its object, God, and refuses to 
bow in the modern house of Rimmon, seeking in the mere 
phenomenology of religious experience its sufficient and 
only object, can furnish the philosophy of geligion with 


7 


8 DIVINE PERSONALITY 


invaluable ‘“‘Lehnsatze.” Given a theology with defensible 
metaphysical conceptions, then why, indeed, should the 
philosophy of religion ignore or esteem as dross what 
such theology has said about the problems which are the 
common heritage of both? To a certain extent philosophy 
may here profitably turn the scholastic tables, and make 
use of a competent theology as ancilla philosophiae. Let 
it be true that each has its sovereign sphere, its own stand- 
point, its own principle, neither can say to the other: “TI 
have no need of thee.” 

I have no desire to raise, much less to attempt to solve 
the problem of the relation between theology and philos- 
ophy, which is, of course, an entirely different problem 
than that of religion and philosophy. I merely say this to 
indicate complete agreement with what was written some 
thirty years ago: 

“There are three regions, at least, where amid con- 
temporary controversies, theology proper could both assist 
and correct philosophical speculation. . . . In connection 
- with the first (the question of the personality of God) it 
is valuable to emphasize the religious apprehension of 
God, with its implication of personality, in order that the 
problem may be viewed from another side than that of in- 
tellect, with its condemnation of personality as a phe- 
nomenon of the finite.’”’! 

One need not necessarily subscribe to the doctrine of 
Degrees of Truth and Reality to admit that today this is 
even more true than when it was written, due, I think, to 
two factors. One is the decadence of theology, which has 
but too often deteriorated into sociological ethics or a so- 
called empirical science.2 The second is the phenomenal 
growth of the problem, partly the result of copious water- 


1R,. M. Wenley, Contemporary Theology and Theism, pp. 126, 
127. 
2 Macintosh, Theology as an Empirical Science. 


A STUDY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION | 9 


ing from philosophic brows following the appearance of 
Mr. F. H. Bradley’s epoch-making “Appearance and Re- 
ality.’ With the possible exception of the problem of 
revelation, the question of divine personality has received 
more attention than any other. That especially the Ideal- 
ists of every complexion have been so deeply engrossed 
in this problem that in this field “of the making of books 
there is no end,” is not surprising, in the light of the em- 
phasis Idealism has always placed upon the necessity of 
a moral interpretation of the world-order. 

But reflective speculation impoverishes itself and leads 
merely to empty logical abstractions which do not satisfy 
the whole of man, when it totally ignores the valuable aid 
theology can offer in a field where technical knowledge 
is essential. Let it be true that truth is neither a matter 
of majority vote nor of length of days. Nevertheless the 
speculative thinker runs grave risks if he takes the atti- 
tude of self-sufficiency. The results of the three hundred 
years of struggle and controversy over the Trinitarian 
Dogma are fraught with rich significance for speculative 
thought upon the problem of a personal Deity. The ripest 
thought upon divine attributes, especially infinity, eter- 
nity, spirituality, personality, has weight when the dog- 
‘matic utterance is repeated unthinkingly, “Personality is 
limitation,” with its implied: “A personal God must there- 
fore be a limited or a finite God.” For the question of 
the identity or lack thereof between God and the philo- 
sophical Absolute, the theological doctrines of transcend- 
ence and immanence are far from insignificant. It is not 
surprising, therefore, that the most competent work ac- 
complished in this field during the last twenty-five years 
has been done by those who, if not theologians, have had 
at least considerable knowledge of technical theology. 
Witness, however their views may diverge, D’Arcy, Rash- 
dall, Moberly, Pringle-Pattison, and especially Webb. 


10) DIVINE PERSONALITY 


All this does not mean that I shall attempt a theo- 
logical treatment of the problem of divine personality. 
But it does mean that I shall not hesitate to use the 
“Lehnsatze” theology can offer. 


That in the realm of religion, consciousness of relation 
to or fellowship with a personal God belongs to its very 
essence, is, | think, an incontrovertible fact of empirical 
experience. The religious experience demands personality 
on both sides of the equation. Reverent worship and self- 
losing devotion is possible only when the object thereof 
is personal. It is significant, therefore, that in every his- 
torical religion at least some kind of personality is attri- 
buted to Deity. This, it would seem, is true even of such 
an apparently impersonal religion as Buddhism, for as 
soon as it became a practical religion, Buddha was deified. ° 
But even if it could be shown that there exists some ex- 
tremely low form of religion, as for example that of the 
Australian Bushman, in which there is not the faintest 
trace of any idea of personality of Deity, this would, I 
think, have little or no significance for the problem as it 
presents itself to us now. For, the attempt to seek the 
essential, indispensible elements of religion in the lowest 
form of its manifestation instead of the highest, is based 
upon the idea that the lowest form known to us now is the 
nearest to the original form. Rather a gratuitous assump- 
tion, proof for which is still lacking, in spite of all that 
has been said and guessed about so-called primitive re- 
ligion.* 

Fact, however, is that not only does the Christian re- 
ligion deem personality an essential characteristic of 
Deity, but every other religion either expresses or 1m- 
plies the same thing in its practical devotion and its ritual. 





3 Bavinck, Wysb. der Openb. 
4 Bavinck, Dogm. I. 


A STUDY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 1 


To look upon this as mere illusion, psychical inversion, or, 
as Lehman does, manifestation and result of ““Urdumm- 
heit,’ is an evasion rather than a solution of the problem. 
The question is, rather, not merely what do we, but what 
can we, and above all what must we construe this person- 
ality of Deity, to which all religious experience gives wit- 
ness, to mean. 

To answer this, it does not suffice to present an anal- 
ysis and interpretation of human personality as the mod- 
ern psychologist conceives of it. Quite the contrary. I 
am quite convinced that the modern psychological analysis 
of human personality is not the proper approach to the 
problem of Divine personality. For several reasons. To 
paraphrase. Religious experience divided by psychology 
leaves a remainder. In the religious experience we un- 
doubtedly have communion of personalities. But the di- 
vision of the one by the other leaves an inexplicable re- 
mainder which still belongs to its essence. Or, in other 
words, Infinite personality cannot be explained merely 
upon the basis of finite personality. This is true, I think, 
whatever our attempted explanation of human personality 
may be. How patently absurd, for example, would it be 
should we attempt to apply Paton’s conception of person- 
ality to any interpretation of Deity: ‘The idea of a per- 
sonality is an organismal conception and expresses the 
functioning of the machine as.a whole.”® To account for 
personality merely upon the basis of mechanical functions 
of a neuro-physiological organism, typical of certain ma- 
terialistic, behavioristic conceptions, is entirely inadequate. 
But even with an entirely different type of psychological 
interpretation the same gap remains. Not only is the per- 
sonality of Deity of great practical religious import, but 
it also confronts us with an ultimate, metaphysical ques- 





5 Paton, Human Behavior, p. 94. 


12 DIVINE PERSONALITY 


tion. And for this problem “the psychological and psycho- 
logical descriptive interpretations prove to be insufficiently 
ultimate. The former takes the self to pieces for the sake 
of so doing, the other calls attention to the parts in action. 
Neither specifically addresses itself to the essence of per- 
sonality.”® If we admit, as I think we must, that “an 
imperfect personality is the most that we can attribute 
even to the most richly endowed of human souls,’’? and, 
with Lotze,® that perfect personality is found only in God, 
it is patent that this psychological approach is inadequate 
and unsatisfactory. Not man. . . “denn den Gottesbegrift 
formt uns ausschliesslich das ganze Wesen der Person- 
lichkeit.’’® 

Moreover, personality as used of Deity must of ne- 
cessity have not merely a higher,1° but even a different 
meaning than when used of man. This lies in the very 
nature of the case. Any concept attributed to Absolute 
Being has shades and nuances of meaning inapplicable to 
finite being. Differences of this type, however, will be 
discussed later. 

C. C. J. Webb, very much to the point as usual, calls 
attention to the fact that historically the discussions about 
personality begin with the theological discussions center- 
ing about the problems of the Trinity and of Christology, 
rather than with psychological investigation and analysis, 
or even reflective speculations.11 And any adequate in- 
vestigation of the ultimate nature of personality, consid- 
ered apart from all human imperfections and limitations 
as it is conceivably an attribute of the Supreme Reality, 





6 Wenley, Contemporary Theol., 179. 

7 Rashdall, Personality. (In: Sturt: Personal Idealism). 
8 Lotze, Microcosmus, II, 688. 

9 Rocholl, Der Christliche Gottesbegriff, p. 71. 

10 Galloway, Phil. of Rel., 494. 

11 Webb, God and Personality, 20 ff. 


AYSLUDY (IN. THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 13 


must seek some other starting-point than a dissection of 
the imperfect and finite. Perhaps we may discover that 
we can know Absolute personality only after analogy to 
our finite personality. But is it necessary to add -that 
analogy is not explanation? Or, to put the problem in its 
ultimate form, since, I think, the epistemological treatment 
of the genesis of our knowledge of human personality is 
not as adequate an approach to the problem of divine per- 
sonality as is the historical-metaphysical approach: Must 
we think of God as personal because man is a person, or 
has man’s personality its ultimate ground and its arche- 
type in the personality of God? Or again: Is God what 
he is because man is what he is, or is.man what he is 
because God is what He is? Or yet again: Does the char- 
acter of finite being determine the character of Infinite 
Being or vice versa? Is finite or is Absolute personality 
ultimate? In each case we shall, I think, find the latter to 
be true. Metaphysically, in Bradleyan terminology, 
_ whether one agree with him or not, not “appearance” but 
“reality” is ultimate, whatever the relation between the 
two may be. Thus also personality in Absolute Being 1s 
ultimate, and not that in finite being. Also for this reason 
the psychological approach is inadequate, however much 
light psychology may cast upon. certain aspects of the 
problem in later phases of treatment. The psychology of 
religion, as we now know it, does not solve the ultimate 
problems of religion. So also the ultimate question of di- 
vine personality needs a different angle of approach than 
the psychological, especially since so many of the widely 
diverging views of the psychologists depart entirely from 
what has historically always been the accepted view of the 
meaning of divine personality. 

As he is so often, so here also!* Webb is undoubtedly 


12 Webb, God and Personajity, 35 ff. 


14 DIVINE PERSONALITY 


quite right in attacking the problem from the point of view 
of the historical meanings attaching to the terminology, 
especially as this was used in the development of the Trin- 
itarian dogma. The ignoring of historical continuity 
must, of course, inevitably result in the most indefensible 
individualism, so often evidenced in the attitude: what has 
always been meant does not make the slightest difference. 
I mean this, and thus it is: tpse diait. Under the in- 
fluence of certain modern conceptions of personality one 
may form an opinion as to what the phrase “Personality 
of God,” or a “personal God” may mean, but whether that 
has always been, or even now can be the meaning attached 
to such a phrase, “that” a la Kipling, “is another story.” 
E.g., “It has to be noted that persona and our ‘person’ 
are not the same thing.’’!8 

Even a very sketchy outline of the historical back- 
ground of the terminology used in the problem will, I 
think, be rather illuminating. 

The pedigree of our term “personality,” is, of course, 
obvious. But to trace it back to the Latin persona really 
avails us little should we hope to find in that way what 
was originally meant by the idea of divine personality. 
For in spite of the fact that the use of persona can be 
traced to indicate the mask held before the face of an 
actor to indicate the role portrayed, and that this would 
indicate, perhaps, an adaptation from xedcmxov (pro- 
sopon), we are still in the dark as to its precise origin.. 
The merry quarrels of etymologists have but ended in 
uncertain conjectures. Schelling’s winged word, “Origins 
are always from darkness into light,” is applicable also 
here, +4 


18 Harnack, History of Dogma, IV, 117. 


14 Trendelenburg (History of the Word Person) quotes from 
Aulus Gellius (180 A.D.) who refers to the conjecture made by 


A STUDY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION’ 15 


But though we cannot trace the exact etymological 
lineage of persona, its usage in classical and patristic 
Latin is not so obscure.. Meaning first of alla role, or a 
part played by an individual, it was not at once synony- 
mous with homo. -The word attained an ethical sig- 
nificance among the Stoics, especially with Epictetus. 15 
That it should further acquire a legal meaning was quite 
natural, for in pleading before a court “the plaintive 
(actor) and the defendant, in plea and counter-plea, re- 
semble the masks, the persons, on the stage. Accordingly, 
persona is a favorite expression for plaintiff and de- 
fendant.’”’!1® So it would seem that however dark the 
etymological origins of the word persona may be it can 
be linked up in meaning and usage with modommov. 

When, however, the term persona is applied to Deity 
we find a rather different situation, and this indeed is 
not surprising. For, competent thinkers have always 
felt that terminology applicable to finite being is inade- 





Gabius Bassus that persona is derived from personando, sounding 
through. Trendelenburg rejects this as also the suggestion of Scal- 
inger, pert soma, around the waist. He also refers to the deriva- 
tion suggested by Forcellini, that persona is the result of a trans- 
formation of odc0mmov. 


Though Trendelenburg’s work is by no means recent, the fol- 
lowing from Zimmerman (1915) shows that what the former says 
is still applicable to the situation: “... the family relation of 
persona has not yet been discovered.” p. 9. “persona: Skutsch 
(CW. Arch. 15, 145) sieht hierin ein etruskishes Lehnwort, sich 
sttitzend auf eine etruskische Inschrift, auf der unter einer 
Maskierten Person gersu steht; danach wurde im Latein aus 
perso-onis (ftir gerso) ein Verb personare und mit Ruckbildung 
(cf. pugnare pugna) persona; auch histrio sei nach Livius aus 
dem Etruskischen entlehnt worden. Beachtung verdient auch die 
Ansicht, persona sei aus dem griechischen mgQdowxa entlehnt 
worden; denn mimus ist ja auch eine griechische Entelnung. 
Wenn etwa bei spielsweise der Plural xgdownxov infolge von 
Dissimilation und in Anlehnung an personare zu prosona bzw. 
persona wurde?:” 


15 Trendelenburg, History of the Word Person, pp. 11, 12. 
16 Tdem, p. 13. 


16 DIVINE PERSONALITY 


quate to express precisely and accurately what we con- 
ceive Deity to be. Consequently a term may often mean 
one thing when used of finite and quite a different thing 
when used of Absolute Being. Of course this does not 
satisfy us, and that Bradley inveighs against this so 
vehemently in his characteristic, incisive style, can well be 
understood. But whether we like it or not, historically 
that has always been the case, and many disputes have 
arisen out of forgetfulness of this fact. Indeed, this 
situation is inescapable, in part because of the limitations 
of human expression, in part due to the fact that the very 
idea of Deity is such, especially for our religious con- 
sciousness, that we feel every nomen to be ultimately 
inadequate. When, therefore, the Fathers attempted to 
express their conception of Deity and personality they 
found the task to be one long struggle. Classical usage, 
both of Greek and Latin, did not adequately express their 
thought, and yet they were bound to language as they 
knew it. 

The application of persona to Deity in the develop- 
ment of the Trinitarian dogma cannot be understood ex- 
cept in the light of its relation to txdo0tactc and, indeed, 
it is questionable whether the words person and person- 
ality would have attained the meaning they have for us 
today, had it not been for the fact that the Latin Fathers 
used persona to indicate what the Greek Fathers meant by 
txdotacic. 17 Even more, the philosophical use of person 
roots in theological usage. 

At first, as was to be expected, terminology was used 
in a very loose way. Ovoia, mvotc, txdctacic, TEdGWROV 
were not clearly differentiated. Precise differentiations 
are usually the result of criticism upon, or wrong usage 





17 Webb, God and Personality, 36, 39. 


A STUDY IN THE* PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 7 


of terms. Thus it was here. It became evident. that 
what one expressed by one term another expressed by a 
different term. Gradually, however, ovoia was retained 
for the essence of Deity, together with vots, expressing . 
that which is common to the modi subsistendi; txdotacic 
originally meaning that which stands beneath or below, 
came to be used for the existence forms of Deity, each 
wdotacis having its own existence differentiated from 
the other. Much order was brought about in the con- 
fusion by Basilius in his letter xeol ovotas val txdotaot. 
Though they differed from him somewhat in meaning, the 
two Gregories and John of Damascus followed him in 
usage. 

In the West there was not as much confusion, but 
the great difficulty lay in harmonizing the meanings at- 
taching to the Greek and to the Latin terminology. 
Through the influence of Tertullian, Latin usage became 
fairly well established. FEssentia or substantia took the 
place of ovoia and @vots, persona or subsistentia were 
used for txdotacic. No small amount of misunder- 
standing, however, arose between the East and the West. 
To the Greek mind the Latin terminology was not the 
equivalent of the Greek. Swubstantia came nearer ex- 
pressing txdotacig than ovota, and persona could be 
used better for medowxov than for tadotacts. But 
medownov had fallen into disrepute as indication of the 
existence modes of Trinity, since it might imply merely 
forms of manifestation and not of existence and there- 
fore encourage the modalism of Sabellius. But for the 
Latins substantia could not be used to indicate txdo0tactc , 
partly because it might lead to tritheism. The legal em- 
phasis upon persona as used by Tertullian did perhaps 
for a time clear up some difficulties, but later applications 


18 DIVINE PERSONALITY 


showed that a mere legalistic usage was not merely inade- 
quate, but highly dangerous. 18 

The attempt on the part of the Council at Alexandria, 
362, to dispel the mists of misunderstanding by determin- 
ing the meaning of the term “person,” was at least out- 
wardly successful, but in how far East and West now 
really understood one another is problematical. Far 
from being mere philological or etymological quibbling 
this groping after proper expression indicated, just as in 
the dno- and Ouotovoia controversy, profound differ- 
ences in conceptions of the ontological Trinity. In Au- 
gustine the usage of persona to indicate the modi sub- 
sistendi is well established, though he quite rightly pre- 
fers to use essentia for ovota rather than substantia.1® 
Since it would be impossible to speak of una essentia 
et tres substantiae, the only course open was to speak of 
tres personae. But since substantia implied something 


18 The question, in how far Tertullian emphasized the legal 
aspects of persona, is a debatable one. Harnack undoubtedly is 
extreme in his view. Hist. of Dogma, IV, 122, 3. Seeberg, Loofs 
and Schlossmann maintain that in its application to the Trinitarian 
dogma the legal meaning of persona is either absent or negligible. 
(Bavinck, Dogma, II, 303). And Servetus, De trinitatis erroribus, 
does not attach the legalistic tinge to persona, but goes back to 
noedowxov and ignoring later changes in meaning gives his own 
twist to Sabellian modalism of personae trinitates as modes of 
manifestation and not of existence. What Webb says concern- 
ing Mr. Bosanquet’s view and his Hegelian legalistic association 
of persona (God and Personality, p. 52) is, to say the least, open 
to question. 

19 Augustine. De Trin. especially VII. Not only because of 
the profundity of the subject, but also because of the way in 
which Augustine labors to express his ideas, now emphasizing one 
thing, now another, it is difficult and sometimes dangerous to gener- 
alize, as e.g. Harnack does, IV, 131. When it seems as though 
he goes to some extreme, it will usually be found that he is com- 
batting some specific heresy. It is not quite fair to take one par- 
ticular view as being the whole Augustine. One should rather ask 
what the particular antithesis is. Harnack’s dictum: “he advanced 
in the direction of modalism,” is therefore scarcely defensible, 
especially in the light of such passages as VII, 6:9. 


A STUDY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 19 


which bore the attributes or qualities as accidents and 
such a contrast was inapplicable to God, essence and at- 
tribute being one in Him, essentia was the preferable 
designation of the Divine ovota. 

During this struggle to arrive at such formulation of 
the Trinitarian dogma, not to explain it, but to guard it 
against possible misconceptions, the East emphasized the 
reality of the txdotactc as over against Sabellianism, 
whereas the West, as over against Arianism insisted that 
the persons were not tres substantiae, sed tres personae. 


Later further deliniation of the concept persona was 
necessary in the formulation of the Christological dogma, 
in refuting Nestorianism and Monophysitism, for a 
proper differentiation between persona et natura. Finally 
the definition of Boethius in the work ascribed to him 
“de duabus naturis et una persona Christi” was quite 
universally adopted: “persona est naturae rationabilts 
individua substantia.” This included, therefore, inde- 
pendence and rationality or self-consciousness; or, as 
it is usually expressed, self-consciousness and _ self-con- 
trol or self-direction. This however does not solve all 
difficulties, for competent theologians have always felt 
that this definition is more applicable to the Christological 
than to the Trinitarian dogma. Richard of St. Victor, 
e.g., severely criticized the Boethian conception. And 
Calvin preferred to speak of “‘subsistentia in Det essentia.’? 


In the dogma of the trinity, of whose controversies 
Pfleiderer says: “ . they must not be judged, as a 
superficial view sometimes does judge them, to be quite 
meaningless,” 21 persona, therefore, indicates that the 
three txootdostcs of the Absolute Being are not modes of 
manifestation, but modi existentiae. The unity of essence 





20 Calvin, Inst., I, 13, 6. Bavinck, Dogm., IT, 309. 
21 Pfleiderer, Phil. of Rel., III, 249. 


20 DIVINE PERSONALITY 


unfolds itself in a threefold existence. Absolute Being 
exists only as tripersonal because it is the absolute divine | 
personality. If it be not misinterpreted, Absolute Being 

is indeed the Perfect Community. ?? oe 

Thus we see that historically the phrase “Personality 
of God” means that Deity existing in certain relations to 
Himself exists with His whole essence as each of the 
three Persons. The further doctrinal and dogmatic differ- 
entiations may, for the present purpose, remain in the Lo- 
cus de Trinitate. I merely wish to contend that the correct 
understanding of the problem of Divine Personality in 
the setting of the last twenty-five years, and it is only 
with this that I am further concerned, is better served by 
considering these historical roots than by a leaping im 
medias res with a psychological analysis of human per- 
sonality. The further content of the dogma as such I 
shall therefore leave untouched, for the present at least, 
and merely refer to it as occasion offers in connection 
with the questions of infinity and the Absolute.** 

That religious experience as we know it demands, im- 
plies and evidences personality in its object I hold to be 
incontestable. That the conception of a personal Deity 
as expressed in the Trinitarian dogma gives us a satis- 
factory basis for maintaining that the relation experienced 
in religion is personal, is, I think, perfectly defensible. 
That the personality of God in the historical sense does 
greater justice to the ultimate problem than the kaleido- 
scopic views of psychological analysis, is, I think, quite 


22 Leighton, Man and the Cosmos, 499. 

23 For the historical development of the meaning of “person” as 
applied to Deity: ,; 

Trendelenburg, History of the Word Person. 

Harnack, History of Dogma, Vol. IV. 

Augustine, De Trinitate. 

Bavinck, Dogm., II. 

Webb, God and Personality, Lectures 2 and 3. 


A STUDY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF. RELIGION 21 


plain. That a personal God does not at all imply a limited 
or a finite God is quite-evident upon the basis of such an 
historical view. And, finally, that personality does not rob 
God of his absoluteness, according to the contention of 
certain contemprary thinkers, is, I think, evident when 
we attempt to answer the question of the philosophy of 
religion, which is not, “Is God?” but, “What is God?” 
These ideas call for further treatment. 


CHAPTER II 


DIVINE PERSONALITY 
AND 


HUMAN PERSONALITY 


First then, with this general historical conception as a 
background, can we still ascribe personality to Absolute 
Being after the modern discussions of the nature and 
limitations of human personality? Perhaps as good a point 
of departure as any, for our purpose, is Webb’s admis- 
sion, ““. . . I should most certainly not hesitate to- allow 
that if we may ascribe Personality to God, it must be 
only in a sense which will admit of a great difference be- 
tween what we call Personality in ourselves and what for 
want of a better term, we call Personality in him.”! Here 
again we meet the same problem referred to in the fore- 
going. If by Personality we cannot mean precisely the 
same thing in both instances, why use the same term for 
both? This is one of the instances in which we find our- 
selves confronted with the inescapable necessity of anthro- 
pomorphic conceptions. True, in our idea of Deity, we 
are to transcend anthropomorphism. But to lift one’s self 
by one’s bootstraps is infinitely simpler and easier than 
to divest one’s self of one’s own nature. As long as we 
remain human beings we think and must think as human 
beings. To demand that we shall, in our thought of Deity, 
escape the limitations of human thought and expression ts 


1 God and Personality, 128. 


Do 


A STUDY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 23 


not only demanding the impossible, but would virtually 
require that we cease thinking and speaking about Deity. 
Is not the designation of Deity as Absolute Idea anthro- 
pomorphic, just as well as the use of the terminology of 
personality’? We must admit not only the inescapable 
character of this anthropomorphism, but also that with 
certain interpretations it is perfectly justifiable, if we are 
to speak or think of Deity at all. To transcend this com- 
pletely would mean that not even “speaking with the 
tongues of angels’ would suffice. Total escape would 
mean that we should have to be Deity. 

Or, to use Bradleyan terminology, without necessarily 
indicating agreement with his views, we can know and 
speak of “Reality” only in terms of “Appearance” and 
still when we speak of “Reality” in terms of “Appear- 
ance,’ even the meanings of the term are “transmuted.” 
Or, what can be said of the limited, the finite, the relative, 
can never be applied in precisely the same sense to the 
Absolute, and vice versa. If the objection be raised, “Then 
why not use terms for Absolute Being which are unique, 
without reference to finite being,’ the obvious answer, of 
course, is, that we must think and speak as human beings, 
or not at all. We may as well herein frankly admit our 
limitations. But to infer from this that consequently what- . 
ever we may say about Deity is fallacious does not follow. 
Our knowledge need not be adequate, in the sense of ex- 
haustive, in order to be true. Granted that an adequate 
knowledge of any portion of reality requires complete 
knowledge of the whole of reality, it does not follow from 
the impossibility of the latter that partial or incomplete 
knowledge is false knowledge. Were that the case, the 
situation were hopeless. So here, always bearing in mind 
that terms cannot have precisely the same significance 
when applied to Absolute Being that they have when used 
of finite being, it does not follow that they therefore are 


24 - DIVINE PERSONALITY 


false. Inadequacy and fallacy are not identical. It 1s 
immediately recognized that, e.g., omniscience, omnipo- 
tence, omnipresence differ not in degree but in kind, from 
knowledge, power, and spatial existence in finite being. 
So also, though we must admit that Personality ascribed 
to God must of necessity be different in kind, what of it? 
The difference between Absolute and finite being renders 
this inevitable. No reflective speculation can, I think, over- 
come this. To take refuge in the terms “super-personal,”’ 
“super-personality,”’ “over-self” does not solve the diffi- 
culty, but rather serves to becloud the issue.2_ As it seems 
to me, the problem in this connection is, therefore, as we 
know human personality, can we speak of Personality of 
God in any intelligible or defensible sense? Or, to put it 
the other way about, is there anything in our conception 
of human personality that would make it impossible for 
us to speak of such a personal God as is required and 
manifested by the religious experience? I think not, — 
Whatever differentia may be noted as between self- 
hood, individuality and personality, the characteristics of 
self-consciousness and self-control or self-direction are, 
undoubtedly, universally looked upon as belonging to the 
very nature of personality.? And, surely, any worthy con- 
ception of Deity must include that He possesses personal- 
ity in this sense. Though human personality be looked upon 
as the outcome of growth and development,* and therefore 
a matter of degree, personality worthy of the name 
most assuredly implies self-consciousness. Again, how- 
ever else one may distinguish between a person and an 
individual, an individual not possessed of self-direction 
would scarcely be called a person. So also a Deity im- 


2 Snaith, Phil. of the Spirit, p. 96. 

3 Illingworth, Personality, 28, 38. Leighton, Man and the Cos- 
mos. Rashdall, Personality, 379, 380. 
4 Galloway, Phil. of Rel., 493. Rashdall, Personality, 374, 375. 


A STUDY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 25 


potent with respect to directing his own thought and ac- 
tivity certainly would not serve as a satisfactory answer 
to the central question, “What must God be?” 


Whatever the genesis of consciousness may be, and 
however we may attempt to explain the development of 
self-consciousness, a “Philosophy of the Unconscious” 
fails to account for man’s rational and volitional nature. 
So also an unconscious, “blindly striving” (however that 
metaphor may be interpreted) World ground cannot ac- 
count for the actual elements of our real experience. I 
would be even more emphatic then Leighton.® “TI can at- 
tach no definite meaning to the notion of an impersonal, 
all-inclusive spirit, conceived as the sufficient ground of 
reality and values.” J can attach no meaning to it all. 
“We can only regard Hartmann’s ‘All-wise Unconscious’ 
as a failure, a ghost with which philosophy and religion 
need not long detain themselves.’’® 

In the swing of “actions and reactions,’ too much em- 
phasis has at times been placed upon the element of con- 
sciousness. “Denn Ersteres (Bewusstsein) ist so oft und 
so ausschiesslich zum Factor der Personlichkeit gemacht, 
dass diese nicht voll gefasst worden ist.” “Personlichkeit 
geht also als Ich gedanke, nicht, wie so viele wollen, in 
Selbstbewusstsein auf.’* But to think. that consciousness 
exhausts the concept of personality is another indefensible 
extreme. Neither intellectualism nor voluntarism is the 
whole truth. The whole can never be adequately inter- 
preted in terms of one of its parts. To take but one aspect 
of any unity, exalt that as the central and fundamental 
principle of its explanation, and force every other aspect 
to bow in humble submission to subordination, is an arbi- 


5 Man and the Cosmos, 479. 
6 Pfleiderer, Phil. of Religion, II], 283. 
7 Rocholl, Der Chr. Gottesbegriff, 67, 68. 


26 DIVINE PERSONALITY 


trary as well as an abstract procedure. I, as a person, am 
not mere consciousness, be this conceived of as “feeling” or 
“thinking” consciousness, or both. Nor am I mere striv- 
ing. Whatever else may be recognized as belonging to 
the essential nature of my personality, surely both of. 
these are constitutive. _ 

So also, to conceive of Ultimate Being as mere 
thought or as Idea exclusively, is rather beside the truth. 
To deny consciousness to the Absolute Reality would 
render both God and all that is not God unintelligible. 
A world order, intelligible as well as moral, implies a con- 
scious world ground. But a conscious world ground with- 
out “volition,” would again be inconceivable. Here also, 
whatever else may be predicated of it, both consciousness 
(and consciousness at its apotheosis certainly implies self- 
consciousness) and self-direction must be ascribed to 
Ultimate Being. From this point of view there can, I 
think, be no objection to the view that Absolute Being is 
personal. 

But, it is claimed, personality always implies an 
“other.’® There can be no “self” except as over against 
a “not-self.”” A person must also be an individual. Two 
possible implications are apparently contained in this. 
The first is that if Absolute Being is to be personal, some 
“other” is required. 

Now, it undoubtedly is true that in man the awakening 
of personality is due to being confronted with the not- 
self,? but even here existence is not due to antithesis. 
Consciousness does not necessarily at every point include 
self-consciousness. The “being” of personality does not 
necessarily depend upon contact with the “other.” D’Arcy’s 


8 Rashdall, Personality, 371, 372. 
9 Bavinck, Geref. Dogm., II, 26. 


A STUDY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 27 


answer to Rashdall is, I think, very much to the point. 19 
Knowledge of one’s self as a person may be dependent 
upon relations to an “other,” but is the essence of person- 
ality to be limited to knowledge’? Even when “TI” dissect 
myself, “I” am present at the operation not only, but 
“T” perform the task. The subject-self and the object-self 
may imply “‘otherness,’’ but they are not separate entities. 
To think that I am merely what I know about myself, ts 
undoubtedly to err. And to think that I as a person come 
into existence merely through being confronted with the 
“other,” is also to err. Personality is developed but not 
created by “otherness.” But given personality, we also 
have given “otherness.” And can this now be said of 
Absolute Being? Undoubtedly it can. But in what 
sense? Does this imply that Absolute Being is personal, 
not with respect to Himself, but only with respect to an 
“other” distinguished from Himself? Or, in other 
words, must the “otherness” for Divine Personality be 
sought in the existence of the world? This seems to be 
the second implication. But is it true, that if “otherness”’ 
be required for personality this “otherness” must be the. 
world? I think not. The infinite self-consciousness 
and self-direction of Absolute Being as a unity in an 
existence form is not dependent :for its being upon an 
other in the sense of a not-self. The formal demand for 
“otherness” is adequately met in the idea that in the one 
essence of Absolute Being one txdotacis is the “other” 
for another tndotacic. If “otherness”’ is insisted upon 
as a necessity for personality, it is not necessary to seek 
that “otherness” in anything apart from Absolute Being 
itself. To conceive of personality in Absolute Being to 
be dependent upon “otherness” which must be “otherness” 
of finite being is a contradiction of the very meaning of 


10 P’Arcy, God and Freedom in Human Experience, 100 ff. 


28 DIVINE PERSONALITY 


Absolute. For surely, the concept of Absolute must in- 
clude the idea of complete independence. A dependent 
Absolute is a contradiction. And the independent char- 
acter of personality in Absolute Being is demanded by the 
very idea of Absolute. One modus subsistendt of Abso- 
lute Being, furnishes “otherness” in itself for another 
modus subsistendi. In theological terminology, the doc- 
trine of the Trinity precludes the necessity of seeking the 
“other” in the world in order to maintain that God is 
personal. However one may interpret Hegel’s well- 
known saying, “Ohne Welt ist Gott nicht Gott,” it cannot, 
in any defensible sense, be taken to mean that personality 
in God is dependent upon the existence of the world as the 
foil of “otherness.” If the demand of “otherness,” there- 
fore, be insisted upon, it finds answer in the Trinitarian 
conception of the tadotactc of the essence of Absolute 
Being. Here the Lehnsatze from theology are significant. 
Let me, therefore refer to them; though the reference, 
must be brief, lest I encounter the odium. Theologicum. 

ven at the risk of appearing dogmatic I shall merely 
state the conclusions which seem to me most tenable, (I 
do not say comprehensible), without lumbering this with 
historical detail, as e.g. the difference in conception be- 
tween the Greek and Latin Fathers. 

Essence, then, indicates that which is common to Abso- 
lute Being as such. Formally, essence is that which 
makes a thing what it is in distinction from all else that is. 
The essence of Deity, therefore, is that which makes God 
really God and differentiates Him from all that is not 
God. This essential being exists in threefold relation to 
itself. The mode of this existence in relation to itself 
gives the differentia of the three txootaoetc. The dis- 
tinction between Essence and Person in Deity is, there- 
fore, that the Person is the way of existence of the being. 
The Divine essence is Father when thought of in its re- 


A STUDY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF, RELIGION 29 


lation to itself as Son. Differentiation between Essence 
and Person, or ovoia and txdotacis is one of modus 
subsistendi, but is nevertheless real. The totality of 
Being exists as.each of the tmcotacetc.11 Again, let 
further formulations and differentiations remain in the 
Locus de Trinitate. I merely borrow this bit, to indi- 
cate that there is “a more excellent way” than seeking the 
“otherness” for Absolute personality in relations to finite 
being, and thus losing the absolute character of Ultimate 
Being, making it dependent upon something other than it- 
self. To deny personality to Absolute Being because of 
the demand which is made for “otherness,” is, therefore, 
not only a fatal but an entirely unnecessary negation of 
the undeniable demand of religious experience. Fatal, for, 
as Galloway rightly maintains, 1f God be not personal, 
that is, a self-conscious and self-determining Being, reli- 
gion is an illusion.1? Unnecessary, for bearing in mind 
the inescapable minimum of anthropomorphism, the na- 
ture of human personality does not exhaust the meaning 
of personality as an ultimate conception. For just as it 
is true, that “the study of life at a level below that of 
personality will not suffice to solve the problem of per- 
sonality itself,’1° so also it is true that the limitations of 
personality in finite being do not give us sufficient basis 
for denying that the Personality which religion demands 
exists in Absolute Being. 

Here another problem presents itself. The religious ex- 
perience, essentially in its every manifestation but more 
pronouncedly in its higher flights, whether 1n mystic ec- 
stasy, self-denying devotion, or expressed in symbolic rit- 
ual, is fellowship with a personal Being. But can it now 


11 Bavinck, Dogma, II, 310-314. 


12 Phil. of Religion, 495. 
13 Webb, God and Personality, 24. 


30) DIVINE PERSONALITY 


be said that this Being is a Person? It would seem en- 
tirely reasonable to insist that personality can be predi- 
cated only of a person, but when it is attributed to Abso- 
lute Being the question arises, can we really speak of 
Absolute Being as a Person, in spite of the fact that 
religion demands this Being to be personal? Or, though 
we may be justified in speaking of personality zm God, is it 
just as correct to speak of personality of God? Webb, 
who has produced most competent work upon the prob- 
lem of divine personality, discusses this point in connec- 
tion with the difference between Lotze and Mr. Bosan- 
quet.14 When an attempt is made to compare Lotze’s 
position, that personality can be ascribed to the Absolute, 
with Bosanquet’s, that the Absolute is individual, but not 
personal, we, of course, are confronted with the problem 
of the relation between “the God of religion,’ and the 
philosophical Absolute. I shall scratch the surface of this 
later. But here all depends upon what we mean by God 
and what we mean by the Absolute. Keeping that prob- 
Jem in abeyance, and limiting the discussion to the extent 
to which we can ascribe personality to Deity, the problem 
is whether we can or cannot in any defensible sense speak 
of personality of God or must limit ourselves to personal- 
ity in God. And inthis province it is peculiarly true, gui 
bene distinguit, bene docet. 

Webb is, perhaps, quite right in maintaining that in 
this form the problem has been discussed only within 
comparatively recent times. But, I think, this is true only 
in so far as this particular terminology and setting is con- 
cerned. Formaliter, yes, the problem of personality of 
God is new, but so far as the real content of the problem 
is concerned, it goes back much further than the formal 
pronouncement of the Racovian Catechism. Indeed, if 





14 God and Personality, 52 ff. and Lectures 3 and 4. 


A STUDY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 31 


we bear in mind the necessary emphasis required by the 
current antithesis, Augustine really put his finger pre- 
cisely on the spot when he wrote, “Non enim aliud est 
Deus esse, aliud personam esse sed omnino idem.”!5 And 
he, of course, was by no means the first to ponder the 
question. When he uses the term “personam” he, quite 
naturally, must not be interpreted in the light of later 
Unitarian controversies. The antithesis was not, to exist 
aS one person or as three persons, but to exist or not to 
exist as personal. 


The crux lies, I think, in the comparison which Webb 
draws between Bosanquet’s position and the contention of 
orthodox Trinitarian theology. These, according to Webb 
agree “ . . . in finding Personality included within the 
nature of the Supreme Being but not predicable of it.’ 


But it is precisely this which is open to question. 


One angle of approach is that of the problem of the 
relation between universal and particular. Even though 
it be held that with respect to Absolute Being such reason- 
ing is merely a reasoning by analogy with all the danger- 
ous pitfalls and ultimate unsatisfactoriness characteristic 
of. this method, it nevertheless is significant and sugges- 
tive. While Augustine was quite right in his contention 
that with regard to Absolute Being we cannot properly 
speak of genus and species, !% formaliter our conception 
of the relation of universal to particular is of value and 
influence in this entire problem. What we find to be a 
common characteristic in all individuals, must, most as- 
suredly be conceived of as belonging to the nature of the 
Universal. For sweet brevity’s sake I omit everything 
pertaining to the psychological genesis of our universals, 


15 De Trin., VII, 6. 
16 God and Personality, 107. 
17 De Trin., VII, 6. 


32 DIVINE PERSONALITY 


as well as the historical differences in interpretation of 
their ultimate reality. Here, however, we find the idea 
of three hypostases of one ovoia, and if each hypostasis 
be considered a particular, each manifesting the char- 
acteristic of personality, each being an existence form of 
the essence or being, then surely there can be no formal 
objection to ascribing to the essence that which each 
existence-mode manifests. The Universal possesses that 
which the particulars have in common. Of course the 
nominalist would maintain that in this particular problem 
no reality corresponds to what we conceive the particulars 
to have in common. To hold therefore that it is permissi- 
ble to speak of personality in God but not of God, is, from 
this point of view, distinctly nominalistic. The extreme 
realist, on the other hand, insisting that a personal God 
must be but a, or one person, is a fullblown modalist. 

But, if we insist that rationality is a fundamental 
characteristic of each human being, what except an inde- 
fensible nominalism prevents us from ascribing ration- 
ality to ‘mankind?’ But this would not imply that “man- 
kind” though being “rational” zs also “reason.” 

_ So too, if we admit that personality in the sense used 
throughout this discussion is a real characteristic of each 
hypostasis of Absolute Being, we most assuredly can go 
further than admitting personality merely im Deity, with- 
out implying that Deity is merely a Person. In other 
words, to speak of a personal God, including in that the 
idea of personality of God, does not necessarily imply that 
the Essence exists in but one hypostasis. .Merely from 
this one point of view personality in the sense of possess- 
ing self-consciousness and self-direction, characteristic of 
each hypostasis and distinguished from the proprietates 


A SPOUDY INSTHE PHILOSOPHY: OF KELIGION °33 


of paternitas, filiatio et processio not only can, but has 
been predicated of the essence of Absolute Being.18 


Indeed, it belongs to the very essence of Absolute 
Being to exist as personal. The ovoia exists only as 
tmootaosts. If personality be conceived of as not being 
predicable of the ovota, then, of course, the entire view 
concerning the relation between ovota and txdortacts 
must be changed. 


So another approach to this problem is the theological 
one of the relation of essence and person on the one hand, 
but on the other the relation between essence and attri- 
butes. Again running the risk of the appearance of dog- 
matism, I merely state that the theologian holds that 
each attribute zs the essence. Or, in the words of the meta- 
physician of the New Testament, for such, I think, we 
-must consider St. John, and not St. Paul, to be, “God ts 
love.” That is not “merely” theology, but the only defen- 
sible metaphysics. In God all His attributes are identical 
with His essence. To say, therefore, that personality is an 
attribute of the hypostases and not of the essence, and that 
consequently we may perhaps, speak of personality im 
God, but not of God, is an indefensible view of the re- 
lation between essence and attribute.19 Here is another 
valuable “Lehnsatz.” The subject matter of this distinction 
within the problem is, therefore, not at all new, even 
though the particular form in which it is now presented 
is comparatively recent. Webb undoubtedly performed a 
distinct service in calling attention to this rather sharp 
differentiation, but it would seem in the light of historical 
contributions, from the time of Iraneus on, that the dis- 
tinction is merely a new formulation of an old problem. 

In this connection one more point requires attention. 


18 Bavinck, Dogm., II, 311 ff. 
19 Bavinck, Dogm., II, 100 ff. and literature noted. 


34 DIVINE PERSONALITY 


Though closely related to the problem of the necessity of 
“otherness” for personality, this question is not quite iden- 
tical. Is God to be conceived of as personal only if per- 
sonal relations exist between Him and man? This seems 
to be Webb’s view. “. .. only so far as personal rela- 
tions are allowed to’exist between the worshipper and his 
God can that God be properly described as personal.’”?® 
This is true if we take it to mean that divine personality 
can not be maintained by those who deny the reality of 
personal relations in the religious experience. If we deny 
that there is any such element as personal relation between 
man and the object of his religious devotion, of course the 
problem becomes one of interpretation and explanation 
of the religious experience, rather than one of a meta- 
physical inquiry into the nature of Deity. The problem 
then is not: What is God? but: what is religion? 

But if this means that the ontological existence of di- 
vine personality depends upon personal relation between 
God and man, it undoubtedly is erroneous. “Pretty is as 
pretty does’ is one of the many popular untruths, The 
nature of being is not determined by the nature of activity, 
but vice versa. How a thing acts depends upon what it is. 
The possibility of existing in certain relations depends 
upon the nature of that which does thus exist in those re- 
lations. Spatial relations are possible only between those 
things which exist in a spatial order. Being is funda- 
mental to doing. Not only is it true of man, that what 
he does depends upon what he is, but it is equally true of 
all existents. An acid, for example, acts as it does be- 
cause it is what it is. The nature of its being determines 
the nature of its action. To hold that essence is more fun- 
damental than relation does not necessarily imply the doc- 
trine of the unreality of relations, but it is, I think, more 





20 God and Personality, p. 11. 


A STUDY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 35 


true than the position that would make being dependent 
upon relations. Ultimately, God is not personal because 
of this element in religious experience, but in religion 
personal relation is possible because God is personal. It 
is not the entering into relations with man that makes God 
personal, but He 1s personal even when thought of apart 
from this. It is, in final analysis, not the phenomenology 
of religious experience that satisfies the metaphysical de- 
mand, however important that phenomenology may be. 
Here also the fundamental characteristics of the experi- 
ence are determined by or grounded in the nature of the 
subject on the one hand, but above all of the object of 
that experience. Personality in the object of religious ex- 
perience is primary and furnishes the possibility of the 
unique experience of religion. But this does not imply 
that, to put it crudely and entirely inadequately, Deity 
would cease to be personal, should religion vanish , or 
should the element of personal relation cease. Absolute 
Being would still remain personal. Augustine was quite 
right, “for to God it is not one thing to be, another to be a 
person, but it is absolutely the same thing.” “. . . it is the 
same thing to Him to be as to be a person.””?! 

This is what theology has always meant when it in- 
sisted that the ontological Trinity is the basis of the ceco- 
nomical trinity, and metaphysically this is, I think, the only 
defensible view. The ultimate nature of personality of 
Deity must be sought in the very nature .of Absolute 
Being. 

Another consideration leads to the same conclusion. 
The personal relation which characterizes the religious 
experience is in the very nature of the case temporal in 
character, since man cannot escape the temporal existence- 
mode. But to make the personality of Deity dependent 


21 De Trin., VII, 6. 


36 DIVINE PERSONALITY 


upon the temporal character of the experience of finite 
being, is a negation of the eternal existence-mode of Abso- 
lute Being, and is an indefensible metaphysics of the re- 
lation between time and eternity. The proper metaphyst- 
cal conception of eternity as an existence-mode of Abso- 
lute Being implies I think, that the existence of personality 
in Absolute Being is in no way dependent upon personal- 
ity in finite being. Certain aspects of this I shall touch 
upon in connection with the problem of a finite God. Here 
I shall develop what seems to me to be the proper con- 
ception of the existence-mode of Absolute Being in its 
relation to that of finite being in so far as all that is finite 
is limited to a temporal order. This requires at least some 
account of the ultimate nature of time. 

“Quid est ergo tempus? Si nemo ex me quaerat, scio ; 
si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio; findenter tamen dico, 
scire me. Quod si nihil praeteriret, non esset praeteritum 
tempus, et si nihil adveniret, non esset futurum tempus, 
et si nihil esset, non esset praesens tempus.’’?? - 

Differences of opinion, which is, alas, but too often 
mere opinion, as to what time is, are legion. But there 
are at least a few points upon which thinkers, with a few 
negligible exceptions, are agreed. Time is not a reale quid. 
It is not a thing, as the so-many-eth thing existing next 
to and in common with the so-many-other things. It is not 
an entity having independent existence. It is not a pe- 
culiar kind of receptacle, the complement of a fellow- 
receptacle, called space, which together hold all other 
things in their all-enveloping embrace without being in 
turn embraced by something else. 

But apart from these, and other, points of general 
agreement, one of the outstanding points of difference is 
the problem of the subjectivity or the objectivity of time. 


22 Augustine, Confessiones XI, 14. 


A STUDY IN THE! PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 37 


And the position one takes with respect to this controversy 
has great importance for one’s conception of the relation, 
or lack of relation, between time and eternity. Kant has 
masterly proclaimed the subjectivity of time, and strength 
as well as dignity has been added to his pronouncement 
by the whole Idealistic Succession. But without denying 
the subjective element in the so-called perception of time, 
need one necessarily subscribe to the proposition that time 
is only a subjective form of perception? I think not. 


Does that which exists, exist under the form of time, 
or do we merely perceive it under the form of time? How- 
ever, as soon as we assert that we see existence under the 
form of time, 27° is the form of time to be attributed to 
existence as such, or merely to the seeing of existence? 
Apart from material considerations, here is a formal diffi- 
culty. If the mind is content to rest in a merely subject- 
tive time, which is nothing more than a subjective, a priori 
form of perception, bene. But not all minds are satisfied 
with such temporal self-sufficiency. The formal diff- 
culty here is identical with that which occasioned the 
controversial storm centering about Spinoza’s definition 
of Attribute: id quod intellectus de substantia perctpit, 
tanquam. eiusdem essentiam constituens.** If the emphasis 
be placed upon the first clause of the definition, it would 
seem that attributes are but the subjective conceptions 
of the mind. If the second clause receive the emphasis, it 
would argue for the objective, real existence of the attri- 
butes independent of the activity of the mind. Does the 
mind perceive the attribute that is the essence of the sub- 
stance, or does the mind perceive the attribute as if it 
were the essence of substance without its really being so? 

Likewise, if we see existence under the form of time, 


23 McTaggart, Mind, 1909, pp. 343-362. 
24 Spinoza, Ethics. 


38 DIVINE PERSONALITY 


as McTaggart says, does time apply to the existence which 
is perceived, or merely to the perceiving itself? If time, 
then, be nothing more than a form of perception, it can- 
not properly be said to belong to that which is perceived. 
True, there is a sense in which we can speak of. time as 
a form of perception, but only because time is a form or 
mode of existence. 


Objects exist, independent of our perception of them. 
Admitted that their existence gua objects requires a re- 
lation to a subject, this does not mean that their existence 
as entities is dependent upon perception. Idealism aside, 
to make their existence apart from our perception a mat- 
ter of Divine perception, a Ja Berkeley, is in this con- 
nection a wholly unnecessary and indefensible feat of 
anthropomorphism. We perceive objects. The temporal 
element of the perceptual form and process is possible be- 
cause of the temporal form of existence of things. We can 
perceive under the form of time (and this can be said 
of space also), because we, as well as the perceived ob- 
jects, evtst under the form of time. Time is not a mere 
form of perception, but a mode of existence, an existence- 
form. With this the subjective element in the perception 
of time is not denied, but merely that time is only sub- 
jective, or a mere form of perception. We can perceive 
objects sub specie temporis because they exist sub specte 
temporis. ‘Time is the form or mode of existence of all 
that is finite.?5 


In common with all fundamental concepts, the concept 
of eternity has many interpretations. These are, for the 
sake of convenience, often grouped into three types: 

(1) Eternity is an unending extent or duration of 
time. 


25 Bavinck, Wysb, der Openb., 75 ff.; Bavinck, Dogm., IT, 152. 
Lindsay, Theistic Idealism, 185. 


A STUDY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 39 


(2) Eternity is that which is essentially timeless, as 
we speak of the timelessness of truths, including some- 
times a conception of a timeless existence. 

(3) Eternity is that which includes time, but some- 
how transcends it.*® 


The first is of course the popular, and mistaken, con- 
ception. In mente popul: Eternity is thought of as in- 
finitely extended time. Graphically presented, time and 
eternity would be two lines; the line of time would be 
finite in length, the line of eternity would be extended not 
merely indefinitely but infinitely at both ends. Or, speak- 
ing in other indefensible contradictions, that part of in- 
finite time that lies in an inconceivably remote past would 
form a sort of past eternity, and that part of infinite time 
that extends beyond the unbridled grasp of wildest imagt- 
nation in the future would form a sort of future eternity, 
while now there is no eternity, but only time. The only 
difference then is a quantitative one. But, fundamentally, 
this naive idea of eternity as infinite time is upon the same 
level as speaking of wooden iron. Time and eternity are 
each sw generis. They are incommensurables, with not a 
quantitative, but a qualitative difference. Non sunt men- 
surae unius generis.27 Time is the form or mode of ex- 
istence of finite being. Etermity is the mode of existence 
of Absolute Being, and can, in the strictest sense of the 
term, be predicated only of God. 


To speak of eternity as timelessness in the sense of 
an everlasting now, is, of course, pure metaphor, The 
now has meaning only with reference to past and future, 
whether one have the “razor-edge” or “saddle-back”’ con- 
ception of a present, accept the Bergsonian “duration” or 


26 Pringle-Pattison, Idea of God, 242. McTaggart, Mind, 1909, 
343 ff, 
27 Thomas Acquinas, Bavinck, Dogm., II, 452, ff. 


40 DIVINE PERSONALITY 


the “duration” of Whitehead.?8 And the eternal admits 
of no now, in contrast with past and future. Let the idea 
of eternity as a changeless now continue to exist and be 
used as a poetic metaphor, it has no place in careful 
thought. Strictly speaking, eternity excludes principium, 
finem et successtonem, and it is only with reference to 
these that we can speak of a now. 


Nor can we rightly conceive of eternity as being the 
immanent cause of time. This is, indeed, an inescapable 
conclusion upon the pantheistic conception of the rela- 
tion of God and world as natura naturans and natura na- 
turata. But only upon the basis of such pantheism can 
this conception be defended. Eternity is not the imma- 
nent cause, but rather the ground of time. Equally inde- 
fensible, of course, is the idea of Strauss: “Ewigkeit und 
Zeit verhalten sich wie die Substantz und ihre Acciden- 
tien.’29 This also denies the essential difference, and is 
based upon the same identification of Absolute Being and 
finite being, without recognizing the absolute difference 
in essence, and therefore the essentially, and not quantita- 
tively, different mode of existence of the two. 


So also, to speak of eternity as timelessness, in the 
sense of the timelessness of truths, is also speaking in 
metaphorical language. If the proper distinctions be made, 
we can of course speak of eternal or timeless truths. 
Were this not so, we could not conceive of anything but 
relative, even fluctuating, fleeting, illusory truths, which 
would, per se, cease to be true. But again, in the strictest 
sense of the term, we can speak of eternal truths only 
with respect to their archetypal existence im mente Det. 
As soon as we refer to their ectypal existence im miente 
hominis seu in creatione, they are inseparably bound up 


28 Whitehead, Concept of Nature, 53 ff. 
29D. F. Strauss, Chr. Glaubenslehre, I, 562. 


oo 


A STUDY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 41 


with the existence of the universe, and though in a sense 
transcending time, namely in their being true throughout 
the passage of time, they exist 7m tempore. The so-called 
timelessness of eternity must, therefore, be of a different 
nature than the so-called timelessness of truth. 


Nor should eternity be thought of as timelessness in 
the sense of a merely negative form of the non-tem- 
poral.°® Such a negative is both inconceivable and un- 
satisfying. Just as infinite is not a negative but a posi- 
tive idea when applied to God, so eternity is not a mere 
negation of the temporal, but has a positive meaning. 
For, as with the ifinitas Dei, not an infinitas magmitudi- 
nis nor an imfimitas multitudinis is meant, but an infinitas 
essentiae, aS a positive perfectio, so with eternity not a 
mere absence of the temporal is expressed, but the posi- 
tive mode of existence of Absolute Being.?1 Bare ab- 
sence of time, with no positive character, would be of 
course but a very formal and negative eternity. 


The old distinction between tempus extrinsecum and 
tempus intrinsecum is indeed fruitful for the discussion 
of the problem of the relation between time and eternity, 
time and change, time and motion. Extrinsic time is then 
the norm according to which we measure motion. In this 
sense it can be said that time is the measure of change 
and motion.% 


Tempus intrinsecum is the existence-form of things, 
through which, or according to which they have past, pres- 
ent and future, as an internal durational existence-form 
measurable by the parts distinguishable in it. This, which 
might perhaps be called real time, is not something apart 
from the cosmos, but is the mode of being of the cosmos, 


30 Lindsay, op. cit. 
31 Bavinck, Dogm., II, 149. 
32 Thomas Aquinas. 


42 DIVINE PERSONALITY 


to be distinguished from a measurable, serial, quantitative 
time. | 

The essence of time in general, therefore, is not that it 
is a parte ante or a parte post either finite or infinite, but 
that as an existence-form it contains a succession of mo- 
ments. If it be construed correctly, it might almost be said 
that time zs the universe as it exists in the successional 
order. Tempus intrinsecum is the being-form of all that 
is finite. Time is then not a reale quid, not an entity, nor 
a mere subjective form of perception, but a way in which 
all finite being exists, and is proper only to finite and not 
to Infinite Being. And eternity, not as an immobile mo- 
ment of time, but as a positive way of being, can be attrib- 
uted only to Absolute Being. Some confusion is found 
in McTaggart, when he asserts that the time series is a 
series of representations of timeless reality, that timeless 
reality is the last stage of a series, and that Eternal can be 
rightly regarded as future if time is unreal, if the series 
which appears to us as a time series is a series of represen- 
tations arranged according to adequacy, etc.?? This lack 
of clear-cut differentiation is also evident in Pringle-Patti- 
son, who tries to conceive of eternity in terms of pur- 
pose. “The eternal view of a time process is not the view 
of all its stages simultaneously, but the view of them as 
elements or members of a completed purpose.”’ And only 
upon the basis of a frank admission that the Absolute and 
God cannot be identified, can he say: ““The time-process 
is retained in the Absolute and yet transcended.’**+ But 
this also necessarily involves an implicit admission that 
eternity is not applicable to the Absolute. Apparently, 
however, he is not quite ready to make this admission, in 
view of his retraction, which ultimately is merely an ap- 


33 Op. cit. 
34 Pringle-Pattison, Idea of God, 358. 


A STUDY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 43 


parent and not a real retraction: ‘““We must conceive the 
temporal process as a necessary condition of existence of 
partial minds. Time -(and space) are to be regarded, in 
short, as the principia individuationis, the forms of finite 
individuation, but as somehow transcended in the ulti- 
mate experience on which we depend.’ 

The conception of time as the necessary mode of ex- 
istence of all finite being, and of that only, and eternity 
as the existence-form of the Absolute, Infinite Being only, 
avoids all such confusion and contradictions. 

The piece de résistance of the metaphysics of time and 
eternity is, of course, the question whether the world had 
a beginning or is eternal. This however, loses most of its 
terrors when viewed in the light of the distinctions al- 
ready drawn. Therefore, it needs but brief treatment: 
The well-known antinomy of Kant is as good a point of 
departure as any: the world must have had a beginning 
since endless past time is unthinkable, and yet the world 
could have had no beginning, because empty time is un- 
thinkable. Now it is undoubtedly true that both endless 
past time and empty time are unthinkable. E-ndless time is 
really a contradiction. Even though we attempt, wrongly, 
to think of time as the sum total of an infinite number of 
discrete parts, the sum of finite parts, however many they 
may be, never gives infinity. Also the mistaken effort to 
present time to our minds under the figure of a line, in- 
volves the same difficulties. But the idea of time as a 
necessary existence-form, with its correlative idea of a 
continuum of being as opposed to the summation of dis- 
crete units, avoids this difficulty. Empty time then also 
loses its terrors, for the simple reason that there is no 
necessity for entertaining such a figment even in the 1mag- 
ination. Time is no receptacle, which is either filled or 


35 Tdem, 365. 


44 DIVINE PERSONALITY 


fd 


empty, and has independent existence apart from content. 
A temporal vacuum has no being. 

The last member of the antinomy, therefore, has no 
force, since with the world also time disappears. With- 
out the existence of the world, there is no time, and hence 
no empty time. This is also implicitly involved in Lotze’s 
statement: “Time in itself . . . excludes every attribute 
which would have to be supposed to belong to it, if it 
had an independent existence prior to other existence.’ 
Were there time prior to the coming mto existence of the 
world, we would indeed be confronted with the specter 
of empty time. But since time is to be considered the way 
of being proper to the finite, and not a something, a reale 
quid, existing independently, apart from the very being 
of the finite, there simply is no time before “in the be- 
ginning.” “There ain’t no sech animile” as time before 
the existence or coming into being of the world. Time 
cannot be posited prior to the world. 

Consequently, only the first member of the antinomy 
holds. The world must have had a beginning. That we 
cannot form an adequate conception. of this, is no real 
or valid objection, since we, existing in the time-form, 
are also in our thinking bound to the time-form. To 
think time away while still our thoughts be conceived to 
exist, would really involve thinking thought away, which 
is impossible.?* 

This, naturally, gives occasion for the question, — 
“Could God then not have created the world from eter- 
nity?’ This question is but another form of the error of 
confusing or identifying time and eternity. Even apart 
from the Neo-Platonic'idea of emanation, the idea of an 
eternal creation is an impossible conception. In eternity 


36 Lotze, Metaphysics, 242. 
37 Bavinck, Dogm., II, 451. 


A STUDYING THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 45 


there is no sooner or later. Only in this sense can it be 
said that God created the world eternally without it be- 
ing an eternal creation, that in the moment the world re- 
ceived its existence, God remained eternal and created as 
the Eternal One, without ceasing to be the Eternal, or 
going over into the existence-form of creation. The eter- 
nal cannot be conceived of as passing over, ontologically, 
into the temporal, but this does not deny the possibility 
of a functional relation to the temporal process. 

Upon the basis of time being the existence-form of 
the world, Augustine could say: ‘““Mundus non est factus 
in tempore, sed cum tempore.’*5 Herein he but echoed 
Plato, Philo and Tertullian. Time, as an existence-form 
was not created, but co-created. Only in this sense then 
can it be said that the world always has been, that is, so 
long as time has been, but this does not mean an eternal 
existence, either in the sense of time infinitely extended 
a parte ante, or in the sense of eternity as applicable only 
to Absolute Being. The question, why the world was cre- 
ated when it was, is not a legitimate question, for there 
was no “when.” “When” came into existence with the 
world, so that in the strictest sense there is no before cre- 
ation. 

This also means that the question of idle curiosity, as 
to what God then did before creation, is not legitimate. 
On the one hand, a recognition of an essential, qualitative 
difference between time and eternity avoids the difficulty 
of an impossible before-creation-eternal-time, and on the 
other hand, the idea of a Deus otiosus is adequately met 
by the doctrine of the Trinity. | 

The implication of this metaphysical conception of 
eternity as the existence-mode of Absolute Being for the 
problem of divine personality is, 1t seems to me, this. The 


38 Conf., XI, 12, 


46 DIVINE PERSONALITY 


category of time is inapplicable to Absolute Being. By 
its very absoluteness Absolute Being is not dependent 
upon either time or anything existing in temporal rela- 
tions or a temporal order. If, now, personality is not a 
function of Absolute Being, but belongs to its very na- 
ture, it then also partakes of that existence form which 
differs essentially from the temporal. It, therefore, is not 
dependent for its existence upon any relation upon which 
it may enter with finite being, which, also in its experi- 
ence, exists in a time order. An eterna] existence-mode 
is not contingent, and personality as characteristic of eter- 
nal Being, cannot be contingent upon personal relations 
in religious experience of finite being. To make the meta- 
physical personality of Absolute Being depend upon cer- 
tain characteristics of human experience is undoubtedly 
erroneous. I would, therefore, rather say that the element 
of personal relation in religion is possible because Eternal 
Being is in itself personal and can enter into functional 
relation to the temporal without ceasing to be Eternal. In- 
deed, just because Absolute Being is eternal in the sense 
developed above, ontologically personality can be ascribed 
to God as He exists in Himself. Or, in theological ter- 
minology, the ontological Trinity is primary and furnishes 
us with the possibility of the undeniable element of recip- 
rocal personal relations in the religious experience. The 
Eternal is not rendered personal because of temporal ex- 
perience, but religious experience of temporal being is 
rendered possible because the Eternal is personal. 

This same trend of thought is, I think, significant for 
the next question which naturally presents itself. If 
God is personal, can He then still be infinite, or must a 
personal God of necessity be a finite or a limited God? 
To this problem of personality and infinity I next turn. 


CHAPTER III. 
DIVINE PERSONALITY AND INFINITY 


The problem of divine personality and infinity is 
closely linked up with that of God and the philosophical 
Absolute, but at least from a formal point of view the 
two questions are not quite identical. It may be that the 
solution we offer for the one problem will determine the 
direction in which we seek the solution of the other, but 
this does not imply that the problems are not distinct. On 
the other hand, the close dependence of the one upon the 
other may require anticipation of certain aspects of the 
second in the discussion of the first. Since, however, my 
main concern at present is to investigate the possibility 
of maintaining that personality of Deity demanded and 
attested to by the religious experience upon the basis of 
valid metaphysical conceptions, I prefer to treat the prob- 
lem of personality and infinity separately, at least in so 
far as this is possible, and leave the problem of God and 
Absolute for separate treatment. 


Here two angles of approach seem to suggest them- 
selves. If God be personal, can He then still be con- 
ceived of as infinite’ If it be true according to Fichtean 
dogma, for dogma I conceive it to be, that personality 1s 
limitation, are we then confronted with the dilemma of 
either accepting the doctrine of a limited God or denying 
the personality of God? The second approach is indi- 
cated by the question, if God be personal can he still be 
considered omnipotent, especially from the point of view 
of the problem of evil? 


47 


48 DIVINE PERSONALITY 


Of late years several competent thinkers have at- 
tempted to answer these questions by advocating the doc- 
trine of a finite, limited, non-omnipotent God. But is it 
necessary to take refuge in such a “Gottesbegriff,” which 
without a doubt, violates every demand of the religious 
consciousness with respect to the nature of its object? 
Does the nature of personality, as that term is predicable 
of Absolute Being, demand that we must relinquish the 
idea of infinity of Deity? I think not. Though Bradley 
may insist, “A person ... to me must be finite, or 
must cease to be personal,’ ! it does not follow that a 
personal God must be finite God in any defensible sense 
of the word. For, on the one hand, as we have seen, the 
doctrine of a personal God does not imply that God is a 
person. Personality in the sense of self-consciousness 
and self-direction of the ta6otacic as existence-mode of 
Absolute Being, does not, so far as I can see, demand 
finitude in any sense. Again, if infinity be predicable of 
Absolute Being, or be essential to its very nature, it 
follows that, given the entire essence to exist in any given 
hypostasis, infinity is also predicable of that hypostasis. 
Or, to paraphrase Augustine’s well-known saying, for 
Absolute Being it is not one thing to be, and another to be 
infinite. 

However, no satisfactory attempt to solve this prob- 
lem can be made unless we know precisely, not what we 
perhaps ordinarily do, but what we can mean by infinity 
when predicated of Absolute Being who is at the same 
time personal. And it is just at this point, I think, that 
one of the greatest weaknesses of any doctrine of a finite 
God is to be found. In spite of the brilliant dialectic of 
McTaggart, in “Some Dogmas of Religion,” the lucid ex- 
position of Rashdall in “Personal Idealism,’ and ‘Con- 


. 1 Essays, 449. 


A STUDY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 49 


tentio Veritatis,”’ and the scientific temper of Alexander in 
“Space, Time and Deity,” there seems to be quite universal 
confusion as to the actual meaning of infinity as it can be 
used with respect to Deity. Before linking it up with the 
problem of personality, let me attempt to clarify this 
situation somewhat. 

As 1s the case with “eternity,” so also “infinity” covers 
a multitude of meanings in ordinary usage. It is imme- 
diately evident, however, that with respect to Deity every 
element of spatial meaning or analogy must be barred 
frem the concept infinite. Of course it is not quite fair 
to attach a spatial significance to every application of 
the term “finite” to Deity, especially when this is done by 
such meticulous thinkers as Bradley, McTaggart and 
Rashdall, but when one persistently speaks of the re- 
‘lation of God to man as being immanent or external, and 
of an external God,? all right to serious consideration of 
further argument is forfeited, so far as discussion of the 
metaphysical relation of Deity is concerned. But it seems 
as though competent thinkers have not altogether es- 
caped the taint of spatial conceptions in speaking of the 
infinity or finitude of Absolute Being. Without here en- 
tering .upon the problem of Transcendence and Imma- 
nence, I wish merely to remark that even among the 
most careful thinkers one rarely meets any discussion of 
either Transcendence or Infinity that does not still suffer 
from the old spatial analogy. To find quite universally, 
for example, serious discussions of Theism in terms of 
Deism, is, to say the least, extremely annoying. 

The point I wish to emphasize here is that any dis- 
cussion of infinity or finitude of Deity must cast off def- 
initely and absolutely all spatial conceptions. As time is 
one of the necessary existence modes of finite being, so 


2 Wright, A Student’s Philosophy of Religion, 370 ff. 


2 a DIVINE PERSONALITY 


space is the other. All that has previously been said about 
, the nature of time can, mutatis niutandis, be said about 
the nature of space, with, of course, the immediate and 
most important implication that the category of space is 
in no way applicable to Absolute Being. To speak of an 
Infinite God, therefore, in the sense of an infinitely ex- 
tended God, or of a finite God, in the sense of a spatially 
limited God, is nonsense. From this point of view all 
discussion of the necessity of a ‘‘finite’’ God because of the 
character of personality, if this be construed as being in 
any way at all related to the spatial category, can imme- 
diately be ruled out of court as being entirely irrelevant. 
Careful thinkers cannot mean, when they argue that 
since in man personality is always finite, or that a human 
person is finite, and therefore a personal God must also 
be finite, that this means finite with respect to space or 
spatial relations. Of course, here we again meet the fa- 
miliar difficulty of the limitations of human thought and 
expression. For a human person 1s spatially limited. 
Human personality, in so far as this is predicated of a 
being existing in spatial relations, can be said to be finite. 
Naturally, the old distinctions of locus extrinsicus and 
locus mtrinsicus, and of ubi repletivum, ubi circumscrip- 
twum and ubi definitum? are extremely suggestive for 
the problem of the relation between human personality 
and existence in spatial relations. But these, again, are in- 
applicable to Absolute Being. The existence-mode of 
Absolute Being is essentially different than that of finite 
being. If we were bound to what personality can mean 
when applied to finite being, we could not use the term 
im reference to Absolute Being. Bearing in mind, how- 
ever, that with respect to “infinite” and “finite” “There is 
a positive difference, a difference furthermore, in kind as 


3F. M. Ten Hoor, Compendium der Geref. Dogm., 45. 


A STUDY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 51 


well as in degree,”+ no refuge need be. taken in a “finite” 
God to satisfy the requirements of analogy to personality 
of finite being existing -in a spatial order. Whatever else 
may or may not be meant by “personality is limitation,” in 
this connection the last enemy of spatial analogy must be . 
overcome. 


Just here, I think, lies one of the fundamental falla- 
cies of Alexander’s conception of Deity.° Even apart 
from his application of the spatial category to God, his 
conception of what constitutes deity is, to say the least, 
unique. “Deity is the next higher empirical quality to 
the highest we know.”® It is indeed difficult to under- 
stand how a quality higher than the highest we know 
can still be empirical. A valid inference would be that 
as soon as we get to know that quality it ceases to be 
deity, an inference which Alexander himself frankly 
makes in discussing what constitutes deity for different 
levels of existence. But this aside. Due, undoubtedly to 
his conception of Space-Time, Alexander often speaks’ 
of the universe as the “body” of God, always careful to 
put the term in inverted comma’s. “God is the whole 
world as possessing the quality of deity. . .. Of sucha 
being the whole world is the ‘body’ and deity is the 
-mind.’* “God’s deity is lodged in a portion of his ‘body’ 
and this body is infinite.”’> And when he discusses the 
problem of immanence and transcendence? he continually 
applies the category of space, and his conclusion is typi- 
cal of his Space-Time conception: “God is immanent in 
respect to his body, but transcendent. in respect. of his 


4 Wenley, Contemporary Theology, 181. 
5 Space, Time and Deity. 

6 Tdem, ITI, 345. 

7S-T. and Deity, ITI, 353. 

8 Idem, II, 357. 

9Tdem, II, 390-396. 


oe. DIVINE PERSONALITY. 


deity.”!° With the confusion, so typically universal, be- 
tween Deism and Theism he says of the latter, “For 
God is for it a being not caught in the machinery of the 
world, but a spectator who directs from without,”1!! 
which is, of course, far from being the theistic view. 


I cite this merely as one of the most recent examples 
of speculative thought concerning God which still 1s 
guilty of the old fallacy of thinking that God can be con- 
ceived of in terms of space. Once this idea is resolutely 
and completely banished it is self-evident that the idea of 
a God finite in any spatial sense whatsoever cannot for a 
moment be entertained. 


Some interesting applications of the “new”’ infinite of 
‘mathematical speculation to the problem of infinity of 
Deity have been made in recent years. Considerable 1m- 
petus was given to this by Royce.12 I quite agree-with 
Leighton, however, that “it does not solve the problem of 
the actual infinite in the sense of the reality of self-com- 
pleteness or perfection.”!* The application of mathemati- 
cal concepts to metaphysical problems does not answer 
ultimate questions. As the advances in theoretical clari- 
fication of mathematical space can give no solution of 
the metaphysical problem of the ultimate reality of space, 
or its relation to Absolute Being, so the development of 
the “new” infinite with respect to the number-series by 
Cantor, Dedekind, Russell, and others, cannot hope to give 
satisfactory answer to the metaphysical problem. Infinity 
as applicable to Absolute Being is not an infinity of a 
numerical series, any more than it is an infinity of spa- 
tial extent and has never been conceived thus by real 


10 Tdem, II, 396. 

11 Tdem, II, 399. 

12 The World and the Individual, Vol. I, Supplementary essay. 
- 13 Man and the Cosmos, 481. 


A STUDY-IN: THE PHILOSOPHY, OF RELIGION, 53 


thinkers. Jourdain is quite right when he says:!# “A 
mathematical and a metaphysical problem are not, then, 
problems of the same. kind to be solved by the same 
method; nor is the conception of the mathematical Ab- 
solute reached in the same way as that of the metaphysi- 
‘cal Absolute.” Though it may be suggestive so far as 
analogy is concerned, as an explanation of the problem 
Keyser’s attempt to interpret the infinity of Deity in 
terms of the “new” mathematical infinite entirely misses 
the point. Since mathematical speculation is not the 
proper “‘principium” in the field of ultimate questions, 
Dotterer 1° is undoubtedly right in maintaining “. . . the 
‘discovery’ of the New Infinite leaves the problems of 
theology exactly as it found them,” but this in no wise 
means that a finite God is all that is left for us.1® 


This does not mean that all efforts to interpret infinity 
of Absolute Being in terms of the “new” mathematical 
infinite are entirely without value. They can, of 
course, lay no valid claim to having solved the metaphysi- 
cal question, but their value lies in their suggestiveness, 
as, for example, in showing that with regard to person- 
ality of infinite Being we need no longer be frightened 
by the bugbear of subtracting the finite from the infinite 
and having the Infinite lose some of its infinity. In other 
words, while on the one hand modern thought upon 
mathematical infinity does not bring us a step further 
in the problem of the metaphysical nature of Ultimate 
Being it does show that the old objections against the 
conception of an infinite Being are entirely groundless. 
Therefore, though this does not give a positive solution 
of Infinity as an attribute of Absolute Being not in con- 


14 Qn the Theory of the Infinite in Modern Thought, p. 29. 
15 The Argument for a Finitist Theology, 68. 
16 Idem, 71 ff. 


54 DIVINE PERSONALITY 


flict with personality, it does, negatively, imply that it 
is entirely unnecessary, as well as upon other grounds 
indefensible and essentially irreligious, to take refuge in 
the idea of a finite God. | 

The point at issue, however, is that in speaking of 
Absolute Being, to apply either the method or the cate- 
gories of mathematics is just as absurd and impossible 
as applying the moral categories to the movements of 
electrons and spiral nebulae. 

Here another “Lehnsatz” from theology is ilumin- 
ating.1*7 With respect to God infinity is not a negative 
but a positive concept, essentially implying that God as 
Absolute Being is not defined or limited by anything 
finite. This denial of limitation is possible in more ways 
than one. If we mean Deus non tempore fintre potest, 
then infinitas is the same as aeternitas. If we mean Deus 
non loco finire potest, mfinitas means omni praesentia. 
Metaphysically this implies, of course, that the nature 
of Absolute Being is such that the categories of time and 
space are inapplicable, and this is precisely what we have 
been contending. But imfinitas may also mean that each 
attribute of God is present in Him in an absolute way, 
and then infinity is equivalent to perfection. /nfinitas Det 
non est infinitas magnitudinis, non est infuutas multitu- 
dints, sed infinitas essentiae. Infinity is perfection in an 
intensive, qualitative positive sense.18 Or, as Leighton 
puts it, one meaning of the term is, “the infinite as the 
perfect or self-complete, as including all forms of values 
in the highest degree possible. In this, which is peculiarly 
the metaphysical meaning of the infinite there can be of 
course only one infinite, the absolute reality or ground of 
the universe in its unity and totality.”!? 


17 Bavinck, Dogm., II, 149 ff. 
18 Bavinck, Dogm., II, 150. 
19 Man and the Cosmos, 480. 


A STUDY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 55 


How, then, personality is in conflict with this con- 
ception of infinity, it is quite impossible to see. Person- 
ality and infinity, as the terms can properly be applied to 
God certainly are not incompatible. A personal God does 
not at all imply a finite God in any sense of the term. 


But there is still another aspect to the problem. Even 
though we admit that infinity is an infinity of perfection, 
and not of extent or multitude, are we even so not forced 
to conceive of Deity as limited, in the sense that the Cos- 
mos, or finite spirits, or whatever other term we wish to 
use in designating that which is not-God, depending upon 
our metaphysical position, has being apart from the be- 
ing of God, so that the being of Deity does not include 
all existence? Is the Universal Spirit not limited by the 
very existence of finite spirits? Rashdall answers in the 
affrmative. “God is certainly limited by all other beings 
in the universe, that is to say, by other selves, in so far 
as He is not those selves. He is not limited as I hold, by 
anything which does not ultimately proceed from _ his’ 
own nature or will, or power. That power is doubtless 
limited, and in the frank admission of this limitation of 
power lies the only solution of the problem of evil which 
does not either destroy the goodness of God or destroy 
moral distinctions altogether. He is limited by his own 
eternal, if you like, ‘necessary’ nature, a nature which 
wills eternally the best which that nature has in it to 
create. The limitation therefore is what theologians have’ 
often called a self-limitation; provided only that this 
limitation must not be regarded as an arbitrary self-limi- 
tation but as arising from the presence of that idea of the 
best that is eternally present to a will whose potentialities 
are limited.’’2® But this is really a confusion of two 
problems. The first is the problem of the relation between 


20 Personal Idealism, 390, 391. 


56 DIVINE PERSONALITY 


the existence of God and the existence of the universe. 
The second is the problem of omnipotence. And with 
respect to the first it would seem as though Rashdall 
really contradicts himself. For, if anything ultimately 
proceeds from His nature, will or power, or in other 
words, has the ground of its being in the being of the 
Infinite, in what intelligible sense can we then still main- 
tain that the Infinite is limited? This would not only 
smack too much of the fallacy of spatial analogy, but 
would imply. an indefensible dualism of God and the 
world. Watson is much nearer the truth. “. . . the reality 
of the world is bound up with the reality of God: to 
know what the world is in its true nature is to know that 
it 1s a manifestation of God.”’21 Or, if the being of 
the finite have its basis and ground in the being of the 
Infinite, how is the Infinite limited thereby? With the 
idea that the entire universe is essentially Revelation, 
there is no need of admitting limitation of Deity. A denial 
of this “Theistic Monism’” forces us to choose between 
a Deistic dualism or some type of Pantheistic identity. 
Finite minds have no independently real existence, 
the ground of their being lies in the reality of the 
Universal Mind, but this surely does not limit the Uni- 
versal Mind. We really meet the same difficulty here 
that was experienced in the stimulating symposium upon 
the question: “Can individual minds be included in the 
mind of God??? Unless we can indicate precisely what 
is meant by inclusion, the problem cannot profitably be 
discussed.?+ So here, is there any accepted meaning of limi- 
tation which would indicate precisely the relation be- 
tween Infinite Mind and finite minds? I think not, Not 


21 The Phil. Basis of Religion, 357. 

22 Bavinck, Wysb. der Openb. 

23 Problems of Science and Philosophy. (Aristotelean Society). 
24 Tdem, especially the paper by D’Arcy. 


A STUDY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION < 57 


only is it quite unnecessary, upon the basis of a proper 
conception of the existential relation between Absolute 
Being and finite being, to conceive of God as being limited 
by finite existents,*° but when we again link this up with 
the idea of personality we come to the same conclusion. 
“The only God whom man is able to know cannot but put 
on—shall we say for man—the ‘limits’ of personality. 
But then, personality, as we have tried to see, does not fall 
under the category of limitation in any of its customary 
uses.”*6 So once more we come to the conclusion that 
to admit as valid the claim of religious experience that 
its object be personal, does not at all imply that it must be 
conceived of as being limited, in any intelligible sense of 
the word. 


The second aspect of the problem has reference to the 
limitation of power. If God be personal, it is claimed, he 
cannot be “omnipotent.” Again the argument is two-fold, 
from the point of view of necessary limitation by an 
“other,” which renders omnipotence impossible, and from 
the point of view of the existence of evil. 

McTaggart contends that an omnipotent Personality 
needs an “other” to be personal, and that this is not 
found.** For this I need merely refer to what has been 
said about “otherness” in the Trinity. He persists in the 
view that “‘otherness,’ must necessarily be sought in the 
universe, and not in the being of God and consequently 
insists that a personal God cannot be omnipotent. “It is 
necessary that he should be capable of existing out of 
all relation to an Other if he is to be omnipotent, For 
if he were not, then he could only be a person on condi- 
tion that a universe had arisen or would some day arise. 


25 Bavinck, Dogm., II, 25. 
26 Wenley, Contemporary Theol., 1&4. 
27 Some Dogmas, 264. 


58 DIVINE PERSONALITY 


That is to say, it would be impossible for him to prevent 
the existence, some time or other, of a universe. And a 
person who cannot prevent something from taking place 1s 
clearly not omnipotent.”*8 But it seems to me that several 
mistaken conceptions vitiate this whole argument. First, 
of course, that which has already been mentioned seek- 
ing “otherness” for divine personality in the existence of 
a universe, instead of in distinct hypostases of the Divine 
essence itself, as has historically always been done. Fur- 
ther a mistaken idea of the metaphysical relation between 
time and eternity. To say that a universe “would some 
day arise,’ and to speak of the impossibility of prevent- 
ing the existence, “some time or other” of a universe, 1s 
clearly speaking of the existence of Deity in terms of 
time, which, as I have contended in the foregoing, is not 
permissible. And finally, to speak of inability to “pre- 
vent something taking place,” meaning here the existence 
of the universe, is possible only upon the basis of the 
old, indefensible dualism of God and world. These three 
errors, it seems to me, render invalid this whole argu- 
ment that a personal God cannot be omnipotent, but must. 
be a limited God. 

But more. All depends upon what we can mean by 
omnipotence. Here, I think, McTaggart’s weakness mani- 
fests istelf. His strength lies in dialectic rather than in 
historical sense, and the view of omnipotence which he 
presents is far from the view most universally held in 
historical thought upon the problem.?9 To say that if God 
can do everything and anything He is omnipotent, and if 
there are some things he cannot do, He is not omnipotent, 
is to my mind just as superficial as the complex question, 
can God make a stone so heavy that he cannot lift it? 





28 Some Dogmas, 205-6. 
29 Some Dogmas, 188 ff. o 


A STUDY IN.THE PHILOSOPHY. OF RELIGION 59 


Galloway comes much nearer the true conception. “To 
test omnipotence by mere abstract possibility leads only 
to irrelevent subtleties. It may be quite true, as Augustine 
said, that it is not possible for God to die, to make what 
is done undone or what is false, true. Yet inability to 
perform what is intrinsically contradictory has no bearing 
on the positive conception of omnipotence. Nothing what- 
ever would be gained for the idea of God by attributing 
to Him the power to do what is absurd. The initial error 
. . . lies in supposing that the abstract notions of posst- 
bility and impossibility are prior to the ultimately Real 
or God. . .. God is omnipotent since he has power to 
invest the content of his will with reality, and because 
the whole realm of mundane existence, including the sys- 
tem of inter-acting individuals, is constantly sustained by 
his activity. God is all powerful, for he is the independ- 
ent and self-sufficient Ground of the being of the world, 
and therefore not limited by anything which does not pro- 
ceed from his own will.’’° 

To test omnipotence,?! as is so often done, by present- 
ing the problem of the possibility of God creating a unt- 
verse in which the logical laws of Identity, Contradiction 
and Excluded Middle would not be valid is an abstract 
speculation to which no reality corresponds, and further 
an abstraction of those laws (even granting their valid- 
ity as over against the recent contradiction of, for exam- 
ple, the law of Identity as a logical law by Wittgenstein 
and others) from the existing universe and then laying 
them down as laws to the Absolute Being in whom only 
they have the ground of their being. Such an attempt 
to show that God is not omnipotent by logical dialectic is 
not merely an error in methodology, but also a putting 


30 Galloway, Phil. of Rel., 484, 485. 
31 McTaggart, Some Dogmas, 203. 


60 DIVINE PERSONALITY 


into the concept of omnipotence something which compe- 
tent thinkers never did. 


Historically there have been three diverging views 
concerning omnipotence. The nominalists took the posi- 
tion, differentiating between potentia absoluta and poten- 
tia ordinata, that God can not only do all he wills, but 
that he can also will everything, can therefore also sin, 
err, suffer, perform contradictory acts, render false what 
is true and true what is false. This potentia absoluta is 
therefore, upon this basis, pure caprice, and consequently, 
since it would imply contradiction between truth and 
power, would lead to contradictions in Absolute Being; 
which certainly is not permissible.?? 


The other extreme contends that God can only do 
what He wills but cannot do what He does not will. Upon 
this basis the possible and the actual are identical. What- 
ever does not become actuality is not possible. The power 
of God is exhausted in the process of the world. Essenti- 
ally this is the position of the Cartesians, of Spinoza, 
Schleiermacher, Strausz, and others.?° 

Still others, and these, I think, more correctly, hold 
that God can do all he wills, but cannot will everything. 
But to admit that God cannot will everything is not an 
admission of limitation or of impotence. For, in the na- 
ture of the case omnipotence must have a positive mean- 
ing and content, and to be able to sin, to err, to be false, 
to deny Himself, would rather be indication of impotence 
than power.*4 Whereas, in our conception of the rela- 
tion between essence and attribute there is distinction and 
differentiation but no division, one attribute cannot con- 
tradict another. And further as eternity does not empty 


32 Bavinck, Dogm., II, 250. 
33 Bavinck, Dogm., II, 250. 
34 Augustine, Term., 213, 214. Bavinck, Dogm., I, 250. 


A STUDY IN. THE PHILOSOPHY .OF RELIGION 61 


itself into time, infinity is not the sum total of all that is 
finite, the actual does not exhaust the potential, so also 
omnipotence transcends the unlimited power which mani- 
fests itself in the cosmos.?5 


A view of an omnipotence that is not bound to the 
essence and perfection of Deity would be an indefensible 
separation of essence and attributes and would bring 
about contradiction between goodness and power. What- 
ever one may think of Bradley’s principle of non-contra- 
diction?® as an absolute criterion, it must undoubtedly be 
admitted that contradiction cannot be conceived of as 
existing in Absolute Being. 

When McTaggart, therefore, puts into the concept of 
omnipotence something which cannot legitimately be con- 
ceived of as belonging to it, and then says that, conse- 
quently God must be non-omnipotent, he is, I think, guilty 
of pummeling a straw man. Especially would this seem 
to be true when he insists, “I maintain that omnipotence 
is incompatible with personality.”°*7 How this conception 
of omnipotence of necessity must be incompatible with 
personality as predicable of Absolute Being I, frankly, do 
TIOL’ SEE; 


It is, finally, contended that a personal God cannot be 
omnipotent because of the undeniable existence of evil, 
unless we sacrifice his perfect goodness. For, it is said, if 
God be perfect in goodness, it is inconceivable that evil 
should exist, except upon the assumption that He is not 
omnipotent. Therefore, to maintain goodness, omnipo- 
tence is sacrificed. It is thought that a personal God can- 
not be both, in the face of all that can rightly be called 
evil. McTaggart goes even further. “By God I mean a 


35 Bavinck, Dogm., II, 252, 253. 
36 Bradley, Appearance and Reality, 136. 
37 Some Dogmas, 202. 


62 DIVINE PERSONALITY 


being who is personal, supreme, and good. In calling him 
personal, I mean to assert that he is self-conscious, that 
he has that awareness of his own existence which | have 
of my own existence. In calling him supreme, I do not 
mean to assert that he is omnipotent, but that he is, at 
the least much more powerful than any other being, . . . 
In calling him good, I do not mean to assert that he is 
perfect, but that he is, at the least, of such a nature that 
he would be rightly judgéd to be more good than evil.’’3* 
“That is all that the doctrine of a non-omnipotent God 
can give us: a person who fights for the good and who 
may be victorious. But it is at any rate better than the 
doctrine of an omnipotent person to whom Good and 
Evil are equally pleasing.”*9 Because of evil, therefore, 
God must be a limited God with respect to his power, 
which of course immediately raises the question, how can 
we then be certain that ultimately the good will be su- 
preme, and not evil?4#® Or more emphatically, ‘To this 
way of thinking, however, there appears to me to be one 
fatal objection. It relieves God of the responsibility for 
the evil in the world only at the cost of depriving him of 
his Godhead.’’41 

Quite naturally J shall not here concern myself with 
the problem of evil as such, but merely limit myself to 
the question, does the existence of evil necesarily lead to a 
denial of either the personality or the omnipotence or 
the goodness of Absolute Being? And then it seems to 
me that those who answer in the affirmative really miss 
the thrust of the whole situation. For the real problem 
is not, what is the relation between evil and the power of 
God, but, what is the relation between evil and the wul/ 


38 Some Dogmas, 186. 
39 Some Dogmas, 260. 
40 [)’Arcy, God and Freedom, 180. 
41 Webb, God and Personality, 192. 


A STUDY.IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 63 


of God? For, to insist that evil is incompatible with om- 
nipotence is again a mistaken conception of the real, posi- 
tive nature of omnipotence, beside being dangerously close 
to the old dualistic position of two principles. To link the 
existence of evil up with the absolute goodness of Deity 
comes nearer the heart of the problem but requires first 
of all an investigation into the question of the nature of 
evil as such and its relation to ultimate reality, and again, 
I do not think that this investigation is called for at this 
juncture, in connection with the question of personality 
and infinity. The point at issue here is rather, does the 
existence of evil mean that a personal God must therefore 
be a limited God? But when we shift the problem to its 
proper sphere, namely how must we conceive of the re- 
lation between evil and the will of God, it becomes evi- 
dent, I think, that omnipotence and infinity need not be 
sacrificed. True, evil then not only is, but will remain a 
problem. But nothing is gained by confusing problems. 
And that, it seems to me, McTaggart does. For to speak 
of “an omnipotent person to whom Good and Evil are 
equally pleasing,’’4? certainly is presenting a view of the 
relation between evil and the will of God which is not 
only absolutely indefensible but which has_ historically 
never been seriously and consistently entertained even by 
the most radical supralapsarians. But when we keep this 
problem in its rightful sphere, and that, I take it, need 
not be elaborated upon here, it would follow that evil in 
no wise implies that the personal God demanded by re- 
ligious experience is limited or finite. 


I agree then most profoundly with Webb’s conclusion, 
that “the existence of Evil, though it must always pre- 
sent itself as a problem for the Philosophy of Religion, 
does not, as is urged from two opposite quarters, so. espe- 


42 Some Dogmas, 260. 


64 DIVINE PERSONALITY 


cially affect the acknowledgment of Personality in God 
as to put us to a choice between denying to God either 
personality or that ‘infinity’ (if we are so to call it) with- 
out which, unless I am completely mistaken, he cannot 
really be at all what a philosophically cultivated theology 
can mean by God.’’43 

My conclusion is that divine personality and infinity 
are not at all incompatible nor contradictory, There re- 
mains the problem of divine personality and absoluteness, 
by far the most difficult. 


43 God and Personality, 193. 


C ERA. Pal ERs. LVa: 
DIVINE PERSONALITY AND ABSOLUTENESS 


The problem of the personality and the absoluteness 
of God is both old and new. Old, in so far as the con- 
tent of the problem is concerned; new, with resepct to 
the form it has assumed during the last twenty-five or 
thirty years. Old, since it essentially involves the prob- 
lem of the One and the Many, familiar since Greek 
thought; new, since the modern Idealists have stressed 
different aspects or nuances of the difficulties involved. 

If God be personal can he still be Absolute? If, from 
the point of view of the philosophy of Religion, as dif- 
fering from the standpoint of theology, “. . . we must set 
out from the analogy of our own ego, the substantial be- 
ing which alone is immediately known to us; ... and 
from this we may conclude to the being of God as the 
Primal ego of the all-embracing whole of the world,” 
there can be no question, I think, about the validity of 
the demand made by the religious experience concerning 
the personal nature of its object. But the question re- 
mains, is this personality compatible with absoluteness ? 
Even if we do heed Pfleiderer’s warning, the “persistent 
problem” of modern philosophy of religion remains clam- 
orously present. “On the one side we manifestly must not 
conceive of God as only one whole of several, or one par- 
ticular being after our limited manner, having other par- 
ticular beings outside him, co-ordinated with him, and so 





1 Pfleiderer, Phil. of Rel., III, 279, 280. 
65 


66 DIVINE PERSONALITY 


no longer the unity of the whole which connects together 
all its particular parts, but having need himself to be com- 
bined with other co-ordinate beings in a higher whole. 
As little must we, on the other side, blot out those deter- 
minations of being which we find present in our own ego 
or weaken them down till they are meaningless, with the 
view that we can only preserve the “absoluteness of God” 
by removing all clear distinctions till nothing remains but 
monotonous uniformity.”* This is, I think, a remarkable 
prevision of the direction in which the answer is to be 
sought for the problem later so insistently raised, what 
is the relation between the God of religion and the Abso- 
lute of philosophy, of which the problem of personality 
and absoluteness is one aspect. With the question of the 
relation between God and the Absolute I concern my- 
self at present only in so far as this is related to the ques- 
tion of absolute personality, and therefore, not in all its 
aspects. 

Again it is Bradley who has given the greatest impetus 
to the discussion of the problem in its present form.* 
Bosanquet has carried out certain implications inherent in - 
Bradley’s views. And to stay merely within the confines 
of the same general school of thought, the problem has 
been discussed broadly by Pringle-Pattison,® D’Arcy,® 
Royce,‘ Watson,8 Moberly,® Rashdall,}° Galloway,!! 





2 Pfleiderer, Phil. of Rel., III, 280. 

3% Appearance and Reality, 445 ff. 527 ff. Essays on Truth and 
Reality, esp. Ch. 15. 

4 Principle of Individuality and Value, 255 ff. 

5 Idea of God, Lectures 14 and 15, and Note E, 430 ff. Ch. 1 in 
The Spirit. 

6 God and Freedom in Human Experience, Ch. 4. 

7 The Conception of God. 

8 Phil. basis of Rel., Lecture 13. 

9In: Foundations, 426-524. 

10—In: Contentio Veritates, 1-58, In Personal Idealism, 392 ff. 

11 Phil. of Rel. and Studies in the Phil. of Rel. 


A STUDY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 6/7 


Webb,!? and others, beside adherents of other tendencies 
in reflective thought. 


The question can perhaps best be put thus: If we iden- 
tify God with the Absolute, as this is conceived of by 
Bradley, Bosanquet, and those agreeing with them, can 
he then still be personal, or must we not, as Bosanquet 
insists, conceive of him merely as individual, and not 
as personal? If, on the other hand we maintain that 
God is personal, can he still be identified with the Absolute 
or must we, with Bradley, hold that he is then merely an 
appearance of the Absolute 71% Or, if we hold that God 
is both personal and absolute, can we still continue to use 
the term Absolute in the same sense and with the same 
meaning that Bradley and Bosanquet do?!4 This not 
only implies that we are to have a “clear and distinct” idea 
as to the meanings we attach to these terms, but that we 
also hold to one attempted solution of the problem of the 
relation between God and world rather than to another. 


If, then, by the Absolute we mean the “whole” or the 
“principle of unity,” or the “universe,’!5 I think it is 
quite evident that we cannot identify the personal God of 
religion with such a whole. Granted this conception of 
the Absolute, although this is precisely one of the points 
at issue, Bradley is undoubtedly right when he says, “The 
Absolute for me cannot be God, because in the end the 
Absolute is related to nothing, and there cannot be a prac- 
tical relation between it and the finite will, When you 
begin to worship the Absolute, or the Universe, and make 
it the object of religion, you in that moment have trans- 


12 God and Personality. Divine Personality and Human Life. 
Problems in the Relations of God and Man. 

13 Appearance and Reality, 445 ff. 

14 Galloway, Phil. of Rel., 480, 481. 

15 Bradley, Appearance and Reality, passim. Webb, God and 
Personality, 220. 


68 DIVINE PERSONALITY 


formed it. It has become something forthwith which is 
less than the Universe.”!6 And surely, the Absolute, in 
this sense, is not the God of religion.1* Yet, upon Brad- 
ley’s own basis we meet a unique difficulty. He admits 
“There is nothing more real than what comes in religion,” 
and “The man, who demands a reality more solid than 
that of the religious consciousness, seeks he does not know 
what.’’18 He quite agrees that in matters religious, re- 
ligion itself is the court of final appeal. And, though it 
is questionable whether Bradley would admit it yet “when 
once a stage of development has been reached at which 
the question of the relation of God to the Absolute would 
arise, no conception of God which takes him for less than 
the Ultimate reality will satisfy the demands of the re- 
ligious consciousness.”19 Granting the truth of this, as I 
think we must, how can we then still deny the absoltiteness 
of God? On the other hand, if we admit the validity of 
this claim of religion, and at the same time realize that the 
Absolute in the sense of the “whole” is not the object of 
devotion, are we not forced to change our conception of 
the Absolute? Apparently, then, we are confronted with 
a dilemma. Either the Absolute is God, in which case he 
cannot be personal, as religion demands, or the Absolute 
is not God, and then he cannot be the ultimate reality, 
without which religion cannot adequately rest in its object. 
To avoid the difficulty, as so many attempt to do by con- 
sidering religion an illusion and God an hypothesis is, it 
seems to me, a very superficial denial of an inescapable 
fact of experience rather than an explanation of it. Brad- 
ley, of course, recognizes the hollowness of such an at- 


16 Essays, 428. 

17 Bradley, Appearance, 446. Essays, 433. 

18 Appearance, 449. 

aa God and Personality, 137. Pfleiderer, Phil. of God, 
Hy, ; , 


A STUDY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 69 


tempt and holds himself far from it.2° But it seems to 
me that there is a “more excellent way.” 


One of the first steps in the direction of this better 
way, 1s to rid the concept of God as Bradley holds it, of 
some indefensible elements. He maintains, “I cannot ac- 
cept God as an ultimate truth.”*1 - However, he seems to 
think that this would of necessity imply Deism, for he 
continues, ““A God who has made this strange and glori- | 
ous nature outside of which he remains, is an idea at best 
one-sided. ‘Confined to this idea we lose large realms of 
what is beautiful and sublime, and even for religion our 
conception of goodness suffers. Unless the Maker and 
Sustainer becomes also the indwelling Life and Mind and 
the inspiring Love, how much of the Universe is impover- 
ished. . . . But how this necessary “pantheism’ is to be 
made consistent with an individual Creator I myself do 
not perceive.”? 

Is it necessary to say that the conception of a God who 
remains outside of nature is purely Deistic? And though 
I am fully in sympathy with the necessary position: Deis- 
mus delendus est, I nevertheless submit that this “in- 
dwelling” is by no means a “necessary pantheism.” For 
immanence is a rather different conception and does not 
at all imply identity. Hence, due it seems to Bradley’s 
“Gottesbegriff,” this whole trend of argument loses its 
force when directed against the position that God is an 
ultimate truth. 

Pfleiderer’s conception is at least more defensible. 
~“God is thus at the same time the ego who is in himself 
and distinguishes himself from everything finite, and the 
all-embracing whole who has all things in and under him- 


20 Appearance, 450. 
21 Essays, 435. 
22 Essays, 435. 


70 DIVINE PERSONALITY 


self, nothing outside himself; he neither disappears in 
the world nor is he excluded from it, he comprehends it 
in himself as the unfolded system of his own thoughts 
and powers. This, I conceive, is true, complete mono- 
theism, in which deistic and pantheistic abstraction are 
alike transcended. Whether, indeed, the notion of ‘Per- 
sonality’ is to be applied or not to the nature of God as 
thus described, can be left to each one to determine ac- 
cording to his views of the use of language; in point of 
substance it matters nothing, provided only that those 
who apply this notion to God do not compromise the all- 
embracing wholeness of God, nor make him again (as in- 
deed theologians, at least, usually do), a particular being 
who is co-ordinate with other persons; and that those who 
do not consider the notions a suitable one to apply to 
God do not compromise the ego of God, and (as indeed 
philosophers usually do) empty him of all contents, leav- 
ing nothing but a vague pantheistic ghost devoid of all 
reality and all character.”?3 


Indeed, why not go all the way and maintain, not 
that the Absolute in the Bradleyan sense is God, but that 
God is the Absolute? Not in any Spinozistic sense, nor 
in the sense of the Panentheism of Baader and Krause,?4 
but in the sense of historic theism. I do not consider it 
necessary or defensible to reject all idea of an absolute, 
as the “tough-minded” do. For both religion and philoso- 
phy some conception of an absolute is indispensible,?> but 
then all depends upon precisely what we can mean by such 
an absolute, and still do justice to every element of ex- 
perience as well as to every logical demand. Though Rash- 
dall rightly refuses to identify God and the philosophical 





23 Phil. of Religion, III, 290. 
24 Pfleiderer, Phil. of Rel., III, 253. 
25 Bavinck, Dogm., II, 106. 


A STUDY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF-RELIGION 71 


Absolute as interpreted by the majority of the Hegelian 
tradition, it is perhaps his trenchant pen which leads him 
to the mistaken characterization of the Absolute as “a 
phrase which might well be dispensed with.”?6 The term 
is, indeed, indispensible, but this does not mean that the 
abstract logical Absolute of dialectic is the only, or the 
proper meaning, and from the point of view of the abso- 
luteness which religion demands in its object,2* Webb’s 
apt remark is quite to the point, “It implies that nothing 
is left out, but it does not say what is there.’’2§ 

Several thinkers do, indeed, tend toward the conception 
that God is the Absolute, but deterred by the problem of 
the existence of the universe, or perhaps by the fear of 
acosmism on the one hand and pantheism on the other, 
have halted this side of completeness, When Ward says, 
“. .. the only Absolute then that we can admit is the 
absolute which God and the world constitute,’*9 the dif- 
ficulty of the relation between the two is not solved. If 
the two are co-ordinate, in the sense of possessing the 
same kind of reality, religious consciousness is most as- 
suredly violated. If the reality of the world is subordi- 
nated to the reality of God as its ultimate and absolute 
ground, then the pluralistic expression God-and-the-world 
loses all real significance as an expression of the content 
of the Absolute. But it is especially Webb who comes 
nearest the position of conceiving of God as the Abso- 
lute without going the entire distance. When he ap- 
proaches the sharp formulation he wavers. The follow- 
ing quotations will, I think, make this clear. 

“.. - [that]. I take..God,.that 1s, the object. of my 
religious worship, to be the one all-comprehending Reality, 


26 Personal Idealism, 392. 

27 Webb, God and Personality, 137, 143, 146, 154. 
28 Problems, 188. 

29 Realm of Ends, 242. 


72 DIVINE PERSONALITY 


but that in worshiping, I recognize this as God, that 1s, | 
recognize that this one all-comprehending Reality is wor- 
shipful; and so God is more (not less) than the Abso- 
lute, in so far as in religion I know (or at least feel) the 
Absolute to be in this respect more than by itself the ab- 
stract term Absolute expresses.”’?? 


“T should even insist that the object of religious devo- 
tion cannot when once the question is raised, be held to be 
less than the Ultimate Reality.”?! “I will confess that in 
the sense in which we may rightly speak of degrees of 
reality and of God’s reality being greater than yours or 
mine, I should not attribute a higher degree of reality to 
the ‘Universe as a whole’ than to God; for it is, as I take 
it, only in God that the universe is a whole.”?? “I am con- 
vinced that Religion cannot, when once it has reached the 
stage at which the question has become intelligible, give 
any but an affirmative answer to the question whether God 
is the Absolute.”?# 


With respect to the first quotation, I fully agree with 
Webb in conceiving of God as the one, all-comprehending 
Reality, but to make the deity of this Reality depend upon 
our knowledge or worship is a totally different matter, as 
is also the view of God as more than the Absolute. Of 
course, ultimately the question at issue here is the rela- 
tion of the reality of God to the reality of the universe. 
If, then, we hold that God is the only Ultimate Reality, 
indeed the sole Reality, and “neither religion nor philoso- 
phy can seriously entertain any other alternative,’?4 the 
reality of the universe is a contingent reality, dependent 
for its very being upon the being of God. God, then, ts 


30 Problems, 253-254. 

31 God and Personality, 143. 

32 Idem, 146. 

33 Tdem, 154. 

34 Pringle-Pattison, Philosophical Radicals, p. 211. 


AS CUDDY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 73 


the only independent Reality, whereas the reality of the 
universe is a dependent reality and it is in God that it 
“lives, moves, and has its being.” That is not, I take it, 
a denial of the reality of the universe, but of its absolute 
independence. Contingency is not a denial of existence. 
It is quite true that “it is only in God that the universe 
is a whole.’ Even more. It is only in God that the universe 
ts. In the sense of being the only independent, uncondi- 
tioned, uncaused reality, God can certainly be called the 
Absolute, or Absolute Being. Of course, this implies the 
use of the term Absolute in a different sense than the 
systematic whole.” But because of the relation between 
God and world, I do not think that such a—shall I call it 
Bradleyan—use of a term, “apparently so ambiguous in 
its import and so questionable in its antecedents,”?° is ade- 
quate or defensible. Absolute is here rather meant in the 
sense of the perfectly independent, unconditioned Reality 
which is the ultimate ground of all finite existences.?® If 
this is what is meant by Absolute, Webb is quite right, in 
that the religious consciousness cannot “forbear the de- 
mand that the supreme God should be the supreme Real- 
ity, the Absolute, and nothing less.’”*7 But it is only 
when we use the term Absolute in the abstract sense of 
the “whole” that problems become multiplied and con- 
fused by the addition, “apart from the religious con- 
sciousness the Absolute cannot be known as God.’’?8 
When, therefore, I say that God is the Absolute I 
mean that He is the sole, ultimate Reality having the 
ground of being in nothing but Himself, and being in 
Himself the sole cause and the sole ground of all other 
being, which has its reality in being a manifestation or 


35 Pringle-Pattison, Idea of God, 432. 
36 Galloway, Phil. of Rel., 481. 

37 God and Personality, 219. 

38 Idem, 219. 


74 : DIVINE PERSONALITY 


revelation of this Absolute Being. This implies on: the 
one hand, of course, the transcendence of Absolute Being, 
not a spatial, but an essential transcendence by which Ab- 
solute Being differs in essence from finite being so that 
no speculative pantheism is required, and on the other 
hand the immanence of Absolute Being as the ultimate 
ground of all other existence, which, though real, can- 
not upon this basis be independently real. Of course, I 
realize full well that this leaves many a question unan- 
swered, and many a problem unsolved. But it seems to 
me that, however difficult the remaining problems may be, 
the philosophy of religion can be satisfied with nothing 
less in its conception of the object of the religious ex- 
perience.3® But further discussion of these problems is 
not, I take it, germane to the present purpose. I am here 
merely concerned with the contention that a personal 
God, such as the religious experience undeniably mani- 
fests, cannot be absolute. And as over against this I 
would agree with. Galloway, “There is however a valid 
meaning which the word absolute may have when ap- 
plied to God. God is Absolute in that he is the uncondi- 
tioned Ground of all finite existences. God may therefore 
be appropriately designated the Absolute Ground of the 
world, for he is the sole and sufficient reason of its exist- 


39 Wenley, Contemporary Theology, 181 ff. 

Webb, God and. Personality, 148 ff. 

D’Arcy, God and Freedom, 110 ff. 
Pringle-Pattison, Idea of God, 253 ff. and Note E; 430 ff. 
Immanence and Transcendence, (The Spirit), 4-22. 
Pfleiderer, Phil. of Rel., III, 290. 

- Galloway, Phil. of Rel., 481. 

Leighton, Man and the Cosmos, 495 ff. 

Watson, Phil. Basis of Religion, 357. 

Wobbermin, Christian Belief in God, 142. 

Hodge, Systematic Theol., I, 391, 392. 

Bavinck, Dogm., II, 106, 107. 

Coffey, Ontology, 46-50. 


A STUDY IN THE: PHILOSOPHY ‘OF ‘RELIGION (75 


ence. He may also be called Absolute because He is a 
Being harmonious and self-complete, whose consciousness 
embraces the whole universe. But Absolute in the the- 
istic conception is definitely distinguished from the Specu- 
lative Absolute.’49 And Pfleiderer,#1 if I understand 
him correctly, is in essential agreement with this, if we 
discount the tendency toward the Hegelian “inclination 
to solve the theistic problem by quietly ceasing to be the- 
pustic:: => So. also, sorleyy uh ataiby othe, Absolute: sis 
meant the sum-total of all reality, then it must be allowed 
that there are real events and real beings which do not in 
their present state manifest the divine nature. But there 
is nothing outside God in the sense of being independent 
of his nature or will.’”4° Wobbermin at least tends in the 
same direction. “. . . we can say that the conception of 
God correpsonding to the Christian belief in God is that 
of the unified totality (eimheitliche Allheit) of spiritual 
ethical personal life. To be sure this concept of unified 
totality also seems to involve a self-contradiction. But it 
does so in no greater degree for the sphere of the absolute 
than does the concept of unified diversity for the domain 
of the finite. And such unified diversity is an actual 
facts<*% 


Upon this theistic basis there is, I think, no such in- 
compatibility between personality and absoluteness as 
there is in the distinctly antitheistic development repre- 
sented by Bradley and Bosanquet. They are no more in- 
consistent than are personality and infinity, in the sense | 
developed above. Indeed, only when we conceive of God 


40 Phil. of Rel., 481; see also: Macintosh, Theol. as an Empir- 
ical Science, 176-178. : 
41 Phil. of Rel., III, 290. 
42 Wenley, Contemporary Theology, 170. 
43 Moral Values, 493. 
44 Christian Belief in God, 147. 


76 DIVINE PERSONALITY 


as being the Absolute in the sense indicated, can we main- 
tain that it is in Him only that we find perfect person- 
ality.45 More, only then can we maintain a divine per- 
sonality which is not ontologically dependent upon human 
personality or upon relations with finite being. Let it be 
true on the one hand that personality is a concept bor- 
rowed from ourselves and therefore in this sense inade- 
quate when applied to God,*® and on the other hand that 
in the philosophy of religion “we must set out from the 
position and must resolutely hold to it that we can only 
know the nature of God after an analogy of our own 
ego,” +7 nevertheless, or perhaps just because of this, espe- 
cially from the point of view of the inadequacy of the 
analogy, full justice cannot be done to the personality of 
Deity unless we admit His absoluteness. 

It is quite true, if I may introduce another “Lehn- 
satz,”’ that the problem of personality and absoluteness ‘is 
one which has always been recognized in the realm of the- 
ology, and has led to the distinction between negative and 
positive theology, or apophatic and cataphatic theology.*8 
This has always admitted that we are confronted with an 
apparent antinomy. It would seem that in our thoughts 
we either lower the absoluteness down to the level of the 
finite and thus make God a finite, quasi-human being, or 
in the attempt to transcend the limitations of space and 
time we bar from the idea of God all similarity to finite 
being and attain merely to an empty abstract concept that 
has no value for religion.4? The solution however is not 
to be found by identifying absolute with undefined and 
unrelated, and then barring personality from this upon 


45 Lotze. 

46 Bavinck, Dogm., II, 26. 

47 Pfleiderer, Phil. of Rel., II], 280. 
48 Bavinck, Dogm., II, 22. 

49 Tdem, II, 23. 


A STUDY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 77 


penalty of reducing absolute to mere appearance. No 
more than that the finite is a denial ot God’s infinity if it 
but have the ground of its being therein, is personality a 
denial of absoluteness, if we do not attempt to fit God 
to the Procrustean bed of a speculative conception of an - 
abstract Absolute, but seriously attempt to formulate 
what that God must be who is concretely experienced in 
religion. 


But does it follow from this that we may, as J. H. 
Fichte, Carus, Steffens, Weisse, Ulrici, and others con- 
clude that absolute personality furnishes us with an ade- 
quate description of the essence of God as the ultimate 
Reality ?5® As a reaction against a vapid pantheism with 
its denial of divine personality, many have again so 
stressed the inescapable necessity of the personality of the 
object of religious experience, that they have gone to 
the opposite extreme of considering personality to be the 
exhaustive and sufficient account of the essence of Reality. 
This, however, I hold to be an indefensible extreme. It is, 
undoubtedly, praiseworthy to insist upon divine person- 
ality, in order to do full justice to the indisputable charac- 
ter of religious experience, and to consider this a cor- 
rect expression of his essence. But to present this as the 
only, or the ultimate expression thereof, is rather a dif- 
ferent matter.°! 

As over against the view that personality is the es- 
sence of Reality, or that it is “our canon of reality,’ 
I would rather agree with D’Arcy, “While we must at- 
tribute personality to the Supreme, personality as it ex- 
ists in us is not a sufficient account of His nature,’’>? 


50 Bavinck, Dogm., II, 25. 

51 Bavinck, Dogm., IT, 105. 

52Merrington, The Problem of Personality, 43, 211, 212. 
53 God and Freedom, 104. 


7a DIVINE PERSONALITY 


éven adding that this holds true also of personality in the 
sense in which it can, as transcending the limitations of 
the finite and human, properly be predicated of Abso- 


lute Being. Or, “. .. the higher spiritual life cannot be 
completely defined in terms of personality or selfhood.’’>4 
Bradley contends, “*. . . a personal God is not the ulti- 


mate truth about the universe, and in that, ultimate truth 
would be included and superceded by something higher 
than personality.”°° If this be construed to mean that 
God as God is not the ultimate truth of the Universe, as 
though any conception of any universe whatsoever as 
having independent reality apart from the reality of God 
were tenable, according to any one of the nuances of the 
deistic tradition, I would most certainly and most em- 
phatically disagree. But, if this means, apart from the 
idea of “super-personality” that the conception of God as 
personal is inadequate for our idea of ultimate truth, this 
is, | think, indisputable. Or, in other words, personality 
is not a fully comprehensive, adequate description of the 
divine essence. 

Also the view of Wobbermin is, I think, rather ques- 
tionable. He does admit that three factors characterize 
the nature of God, namely, “the absolute and ethical per- 
sonality of God, the absolute transcendence or sublimity 
of God, and the absolute immanence or pervasiveness of 
God.”°® But when he says that these three factors “are 
really not of equal importance, but that the first factor, 
the ethical personality of God is predominant over the 
other two,’®* he takes what I hold to be an untenable po- 
sition. 

If God, as ultimate Reality, were such that any one 


54 —D’Arcy in: Life and Finite Individuality, 155. 
55 Essays, 432.. 

56 Christian Belief in God, 142. 

57 Idem, 143. 


4A STUDY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION ..79 


nomen could adequately express his essence, the situation 
be immensely simplified. But it is not thus.>§ 


May I be permitted once more, now for the last time, 
to illustrate how theology can in this situation aid the 
philosophy of religion? Though on the one hand, upon 
the basis of the proper conception of the relation between 
essence and attribute, personality must be conceived of as 
belonging to the essence of God, and not merely to the 
proprietates of the hypostases, and as over against the 
pantheistic “Gottesbegriff” it is necessary to insist upon 
the essential personality of Deity, on the other hand to 
conceive of personality as an exhaustive indication, par 
excellence, of the essence is to be avoided. Not only be- 
cause this might easily lead to the conception of Deity as 
“Einzelpersonlichkeit,’ but also because it implies that 
other attributes are subordinate, which would, in the very 
nature of the case, be indefensible. Therefore, theology, 
always, of course, bearing in mind that this procedure 
is merely due to the inevitable limitations of our thought, 
preferred to emphasize the aseity of God. If any such 
distinction is permissible, and the necessity can scarcely 
be avoided, it is preeminently the fact that God is ens a 
se that distinguishes Him from all finite being as ens ab 
alio. And on the one hand, the fact that He is ens a se 
does not at all exclude the possibility of personality, and 
on the other it permits of absoluteness. It is, therefore, 
this emphasis, rather than the other, that sheds light 
upon the “more excellent way” of conceiving of God as 
personal, thus satisfying the demand inherently charac- 
teristic of religious experience, and at the same time as 
the Ultimate Reality, who is the true Absolute, in whom 
“we live, move and have our being.”°® | 


58 Bavinck, Dogm., II, 113. 
59 Bavinck, Dogm., IT, 105, 106, 107, 112, 113, 312 ff. 


80 DIVINE PERSONALITY 


I conclude, therefore, that God is not only personal, 
but that an admission of his personality is not a denial of 
His infinity, nor of His absoluteness. But also of this it 
must be admitted, not necessarily as an indication of weak- 
ness, though “we see through a glass, darkly,” but rather 
as a confession of an undeniable truth: “Like other 
Christians I cannot ‘prove’ these things any more than | 
can ‘prove’ my own existence, But I am able to say hum- 
bly, ‘J know.’ I am saluted by the discordant shouts of 
the old, old quarrel between the ‘head’ and the ‘heart,’ a 
duel destined to last with the human race. But the two 
could not disagree unless they belonged together. Pa- 
tience with the plea of each alone will set the door of 
truth ajar. For neither has reason to say to the other, 
‘I have no need of thee.’ 


Practice ‘proves’ truth, but 
practice formulated by the head.”’®° 


60 Wenley, Modern Thought and the Crisis in Belief, 360. 


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